I remember once working for a company that got caught during a supply shortage. Yes they were meant to get several hundred Opamps a day from there supplier. but the manufacturer fell short some 20,000 pieces. Anyway the supplier scoured the world and thought they had gotten some valid parts. When we got them the package was right the date codes were a few years old. This as we expected as they were surplus.(Well that's what we were told). We built 4000 pieces. Sent them off they were put in there machines and didn't work as well as expected. It turned out that the Opamps were substandard parts with a higher than expected noise figure something that was not normally tested for in manufacture. The moral of the story is that it is easy to be caught with parts that you think are genuine. The part ran on the automatic test jig. Showed the correct gain in circuit! The one thing that could not be tested by the jig was noise performance!
sarason
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