Go find those dusty old metrics, working capital, inventory turns and all the rest of Analysis 101 because it's not just chips.*
From EE Times, April 22:
What Chip Shortages Taught Us About Supply Chain Resiliency
No one could have predicted that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis would have such an impact on semiconductor manufacturing. The semiconductor industry is adapting in response, but it hasn’t been easy, and there are still chip shortages. There are measures everyone could take to avoid having to go through this ever again.
When the pandemic first hit, there was a cascade of unanticipated events. It all started with market sectors such as automotive anticipating a drop in demand for their products, prompting them to reduce their demand for chips accordingly. Immediately, their freed-up capacity was claimed by markets that anticipated spikes in demand, such as PCs and electronics.
However, both the drop in demand and following recovery happened much quicker than anticipated. Soon enough, due to reporting delays in supply and demand across the entire value chain and capacity being already reallocated, many businesses ended up facing a chip shortage that halted their entire manufacturing process.
Semiconductor manufacturing can take anywhere between 13 to 18 weeks to complete and building additional capacity for manufacturing requires significant time and capital. Adding the time required for installation and qualifications, as well as current shortages in substrate and diminished air cargo capacity, many industry sectors found themselves with a complex problem at hand.
The crunch at older nodes
Over the past decade, foundries have focused their investments in leading nodes such as 5nm and 7nm due to their profitability and high demand from high tech companies. This resulted in a lack of investment in the older nodes that sectors such as automotive typically rely on, further aggravating the shortage by making it even more difficult to find capacity for older nodes somewhere else.
Moreover, the automotive industry has some of the most stringent requirements in their qualification process. Once chips are qualified, it’s not easy to move them to another fab due to the many processes involved and the longer time required to get to a steady state of production.
There is also the well-known impact of quality vs quantity. Unlike other industries, quality for semiconductors improves with higher volumes as the process gets refined over time. Lower volumes result in lower quality semiconductors, due to less data and fewer dedicated resources; automotive businesses cannot afford lower quality products.
Moving forward
Due to capacity being already allocated, businesses have limited options to solve the current situation but can prepare for the next crisis. They can diversify their manufacturing partners for alternative sourcing strategies and take a broader, more proactive stance when watching the supply landscape to better anticipate delays.
Long-term, companies should strive to build supply chain resiliency into their manufacturing process so that they are better prepared in the future.
Supply competition
Businesses can no longer afford to forecast solely based on their customers’ needs. The recent shortage has highlighted that they need to look at other sectors relying on similar chips as their supply competition. When looking at capacity, they should ask themselves which sectors might have similar needs in the same time span....
....MUCH MORE
A recent example:
And a heads-up from last October:
Food Hoarding: The World Is Shifting From Just-in-Time To Just-in-Case
