The deadly 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that wreaked havoc in Japan has caused a run on electronic parts, resulting in some distributors freezing their inventories and carefully reviewing orders before fulfilling them. Rolling blackouts, damage to infrastructure and some suppliers’ facilities, and transportation problems in Japan has caused uncertainty in the electronics supply chain, resulting in panic buying by some OEMs and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers. Distributors have responded by essentially allocating parts to customers with whom they have long-term relationships.

Read more about these events in the Electronic Components Industry Association e-newsletter

An investigation into counterfeit parts in the U.S. DOD supply chain has been launched by U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) who are working together with colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The committee released a statement that reads, in part: “Counterfeit parts pose a risk to our national security, the reliability of our weapons systems, and the safety of our military men and women. The proliferation of counterfeit goods also damages our economy and costs American jobs.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to call public hearings on the matter of counterfeit electronic parts in the military later this year. It’s about time that a problem of this magnitude got the public attention it deserves.

Read more about the counterfeit parts investigation coverage by “Military & Aerospace Electronics” here.

The electronics industry has entered an era of “systemic complexity” where growing ecosystems of companies need to collaborate closely.

“Avoiding risk” were the keywords at the recent GlobalFoundries Conference in Silicon Valley where a panel of CEOs cautioned against being best-in-class in one area and not others.

Business success requires companies not only collaborate to develop chips but Web-enabled systems and network services, they said. If any link in the chain fails, all the players risk failure.

“We’re not just dealing with silicon scaling complexity but with a kind of systemic complexity where being best-in-class in one area is not sufficient to avoid risk and risks are going up,” said Aart de Geus, chief executive of Synopsys.

It’s a winner-takes-all situation, he added, with whole ecosystems racing to high volume systems, so value chains become very important.

“As products get more complex, no one company can provide everything, but some can provide a great deal of the system,” said Warren East, chief executive of ARM in a tip of the hat to Apple.

Under heated competition, “sometimes it’s difficult to share information with each other but we have to have deeper cooperation and wider ecosystems,” said Robert Hum, general manager of the deep submicron division at Mentor Graphics, standing in for CEO Wally Rhines.

You can check out the entire discussion about avoiding risk here.

There are apparently some positive signs for the electronics economy in the second half of this year but, nonetheless, one consulting firm has more than halved its global chip market growth forecast for 2011 from 9% to 4%.

According to Semiconductor Intelligence LLC, the reduction is due to the weakness of the semiconductor market in the second half which has knocked what was set to be an average year off course.

However, while many analysts are attributing the second-half decline to general economic malaise and fear of a double-dip recession in the Western hemisphere, analyst Bill Jewell sees the week Q2 as being due to the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan which damaged much of the semiconductor supply chain.

Jewell observed on his Web site: “The news is not all bad,” before going on to point out that while consumers may be hurting and cutting back in some areas, consumer and business spending on electronics is still relatively strong. U.S. consumer spending on recreational goods and vehicles, which is 75% electronics-based, grew 15.3% in 1Q11 and 9.3% in 2Q11, Jewell said. U.S. business investment in equipment and software grew 8.7% in Q1 and 7.9% in Q2, he added.

“The semiconductor industry should continue to grow at a moderate rate for the remainder of 2011 and in 2012,” Jewell concluded. “Despite concerns about the overall economies in the U.S. and Europe, major drivers of the semiconductor market remain fairly healthy.”

Semiconductor Intelligence is keeping its 2012 forecast for global chip market growth at 10%.