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What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

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Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#421

Post by andrekandre »

JPKab wrote: post #379
andrekandre wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a hardcore believer in the ACTUAL Agile philosophy, which is rooted in lean would then the work of juran, demming, goldratt et al, be good reading as well?

I'm a fan of anything that is rooted in reality and has been battle-tested. If it's theoretical, I don't care about it. Toyota didn't will lean into thin air out of nothing. It was evolved, tested, and refined in the harsh economic realities of post WW2 Japan. Bullshit wasn't capable of surviving that environment, just things that actually worked. A lot of the Demming types are pure theory, or just garbage in the mod…

  > A lot of the Demming types are pure theory, or just garbage in the modern age
wasnt alot of demmings writings used by japanese companies in general though?

i guess what your saying is, its better to study those companies themselves, even if influenced by said person...?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#422

Post by Grakel »

reportingsjr wrote: post #413
Grakel wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite, the lumber industry has been selling greener and wetter wood year after year. If they would stockpile the quality would increase, and they could build a cushion to fluctuating demand.

Do you have a source to back up either of these claims? 1. greener/wetter wood 2. quality increase from drier wood There are standards for the moisture content in dimensional lumber. It's unlikely lumber yards are going to be selling wood that's outside of the standard ranges. Additionally, some of the soft woods are a PITA to deal with if they get too dry, as they are more prone to cracking when driving fasteners wi…

I don't have a study I can link you, but I would encourage you to ask around. I buy a lot of lumber and I talk to people across the country who do too. It goes far beyond anecdotes, the practice is common knowledge today.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#423

Post by Baeocystin »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #186

How bad are the supply chain bottlenecks really? Compared to the amount of discussion on the matter they seem pretty minimal outside a couple sectors. I certainly don't see any lack of products being sold at grocery and big box stores. The only exception I see are some hot items like GPUs and game consoles but I don't they the supply chain itself is the constraint but rather the actual silicon. The only significant e…

About half of the bog-standard IT gear I normally buy is months+ lead time if I need that specific part. I can usually find a workaround, but it's often ugly. Don't look at the man behind the curtain swearing in the racks.

I had hoped that by now things would have eased up, but if anything it is worse than the start of the year.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#424

Post by HarryHirsch »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #387

On the other hand, sometimes, it's straight ahead bad luck. A chip we use in one of our products is made in a semiconductor fab in Malaysia. It's the only place in the world that makes the chip. That fab has been shut down for about 6 months as the nation struggles with COVID. In the meantime, the inventory in the supply chain, and even customer warehouses, has been picked clean by brokers to be re-sold for high-cost…

It's the only place in the world that makes the chip.

Back then we had second-source agreements. What happened to that concept?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#425

Post by ladyattis »

MR4D wrote: post #208
ladyattis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the capital owning class just doesn't care if their businesses go into shock because they already have their cash in hand. They'll never go back to pre-ROE days because they'd have to live with less money and worse less control. While they still have personal reserves in the billions they can decide the fate of their ventures but if say 20% of their current cash was on the balance sheets of corporations with boa…

> Switzerfy the economy Just off the top of my head, the Swiss: don't make airplanes (no Boeing, Embraer) don't make cars (no GM, Ford, Toyota, etc) have big consolidated banks (UBS & CS) have large trading firms (Glencore, Trafigura) etc.... My point is not to nitpick (I actually agree with your post) , but to show that even in a tiny country like Switzerland (smaller than Chicago), it is hard to do that.

No, my point about Switzerfy is to mean that we need to distribute power and assets more evenly just as the Swiss distribute power more evenly politically. We've left too much to float to the top of the economy where those who have enough wealth which they can roll over interest with little effort on their part.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#426

Post by School-Cotton »

philwelch wrote: post #279
gruez wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's your methodology? The linked section includes stuff like the "2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic", which was "worldwide" but had a death toll of 53 people. Should that be considered a pandemic? If we go with the "Epidemics and pandemics with at least 1 million deaths" table, there's only 6 worldwide pandemics.

If you're counting pandemics since 1891, I think any number between 6 and 13 is more defensible than the number 2. Let me count again, while leaving out relatively minor pandemics like Zika: * Fifth cholera pandemic * Third plague pandemic (multiple outbreaks are listed) * Sixth cholera pandemic * 1915 encephalitis lethargica pandemic * Spanish flu * 1957-58 "Asian flu" * Seventh cholera pandemic * 1968-70 "Hong Kong…

It seems obvious to me that covid-19 had a much greater impact than any of those previous pandemics, even more severe ones, because it’s the first one for which we even attempted to implement such disruptive mitigations. Working from home was not feasible for most people in 1968-1970 for example, and nobody would have seriously suggested a major economic shutdown to deal with it.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#427

Post by School-Cotton »

Johnny555 wrote: post #129
xondono wrote: post #62

While I agree that a lot of companies have been screwing up the supply chains and their providers ( cough automotive cough ), maybe we should not build extra widgets just to support events that happen 1 out of every 100 years. Not every system is a critical system, not all systems require spare capacity.

Maybe we should not build extra widgets just to support events that happen 1 out of every 100 years. Except the COVID pandemic is probably not a 1 in 100 year event, the last SARS epidemic was less than 20 years ago (and fortunately was not as disruptive as the current one). I wouldn't be surprised if the next one is within a decade. And we've done little to prepare for it.

I doubt this level of shutdown will be tried for the next pandemic, even if it’s exactly as severe as covid. People won’t tolerate it.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#428

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #424
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #387

On the other hand, sometimes, it's straight ahead bad luck. A chip we use in one of our products is made in a semiconductor fab in Malaysia. It's the only place in the world that makes the chip. That fab has been shut down for about 6 months as the nation struggles with COVID. In the meantime, the inventory in the supply chain, and even customer warehouses, has been picked clean by brokers to be re-sold for high-cost…

It's the only place in the world that makes the chip. Back then we had second-source agreements. What happened to that concept?

We don't buy enough chips to compel Infineon to build another fab.

Usually, we manage end of life matters with last time buys, etc. But this wasn't an end of life situation, and frankly, was not anticipated. To solve, we'd need to design alternate chips for all that are used, which is not economically feasible at this point in the product's life cycle (now 20+ years).

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#429

Post by Gigachad »

cbdumas wrote: post #314

All of this talk about supply chain issues are totally missing the point in my opinion. So many articles (and tweet chains I guess) have been written about supply chain issues, yet every one of them seems to ignore the elephant in the room which is demand for goods vs services. Over the course of the pandemic there was a staggering re-balancing of consumer spending [0] from services to goods, to which supply chains h…

Seems like the answer to all of these problems is that everything changed. Nothing in particular can be blamed for the fact that virtually everyone changed most of their behaviors significantly and for an extended time.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#430

Post by Gigachad »

dpierce9 wrote: post #136

The average lifespan of a company is 10 years.[0] The average lifespan of companies on the S&P is maybe a little more than twice that. Each year you have a 1/100 chance of seeing a hundred year flood. With a short lifespan the odds are decent that your company simply won’t see one. The question is then: how good of an idea is it to spend to be robust to them? Of course it is viciously circular: planning to not be rob…

It should all come down to a cost/risk/reward/importance factor.

If you are a bakery that sells very close to 100 loafs a day, you would want to make about 100 per day. Some event happens randomly and you have demand for 400. You could call it a supply chain failure or you could call it a success to turn away 300 customers once a year vs throwing out 300 loafs every other day.

At the end of the period, all of this redundancy spend gets binned so you gained nothing from it. Some essential services like healthcare could make sense to spend extra on redundancy since turning away 300 "customers" is a lot more serious than not getting your loaf or gaming pc.

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