Although there has been much talk about (and some hype perhaps) on the recent affect of the Japan earthquake on the electronic supply chain, it hit home for me when I was visiting an OEM Electronic Manufacturer this past June.  They talked about how some of their components like oscillators and capacitors etc which were normally sourced from Japan manufacturers were now needing to be sourced from secondary and tertiary suppliers.  Although of the same general specification, these parts turned out to be of inferior quality, causing failures when cycled over temperature or under corner conditions of testing. This has forced this customer to focus on more extensive testing and qualification of supplier components.

Maybe if the OEM customer received the quality data on those incoming parts, they could do their own analysis of where things are breaking down between incoming quality and what they are actually testing. An interesting article on the effect of supply chain components from the Japan Earthquake is here: http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=1096&doc_id=207372&itc=ebnonline_gnews