You’ve saved and scrimped to buy the new car of your dreams. You have reviewed all of your new car warranty options and have secured the best new car warranty plan available for your vehicle. You have good insurance coverage and your feeling pretty darn well protected. But have you ever wondered if the parts that you will eventually need to buy are genuine or counterfeit? Well,3M has.

“The automotive industry is constantly dealing with counterfeiting and parts piracy. These sub-par and unsafe products wind up with unknowing consumers, putting lives at risk and exposing shop owners to potential liability. Besides safety and health concerns, counterfeiting leads to shrinking profit margins, increased warranty costs, financial investments in intellectual property protection and brand damage. In most situations, these products look almost identical to the originals. However, they are usually full of errors, inferior and don’t meet appropriate standards. To combat this, 3M has launched a new format of the 3M Confirm authentication products featuring floating image technology that helps protect against counterfeiting and tampering. The new format offers multi-layered overt and covert security features, and allows for the incorporation of security and tracking features into the same label. The product can be used on virtually any auto part.”

An innovative 3M technology enables auto part manufactureres to apply a lablel that will allow the consumer or auto repair shop to quickly detect any counterfeits that nay be in their stock.

“This fully customizable strip is ideal for any market segments that are known victims of counterfeiting or fraud, such as automotive parts,” says Bill Markovitz, marketing development manager, 3M Security Systems Division. “The additional functionality of the new format allows manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to use one label for easy authentication, bar codes, tracking and other additional security features, which cuts costs and increases efficiency and security.”

from ABRN