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Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

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Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#441
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

Because people equal JIT with close to zero buffer inventory. JIT is basically a concept of defining the correct and minimal buffer. If that's close zero, cool. If it's more than zero, cool as well. It also puts a lot of emphasis on lot sizes and lead-times. No one in the right mind would implement JIT for stuff involving sea freight without buffer stock close to production.

There are pre-conditions for products to be set up as JIT. As you mention, short lead times, but also things like high quality, high availability, and others as well.

Toyota and a lot of the concepts that come out of Toyota are ideals to strive for. It doesn’t mean everything is like that, which is hard to understand from just reading the lean literature.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#442
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

Isn't TSMC working on expanding into the US?

They are indeed, in Arizona. First they are going to have employees train on-site in Taiwan (will get housing for themselves and their families for duration).

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, there seems to be a difference worth noting between "industries that currently employ a large number of the population with little transfer of utility to other industry" and "objectively basic needs for a society". I figure there are also different definitions of strategic depending on the size and capability of an economy. The US is large and geographically fortunate enough that it theoretically "could" be a…

> Indeed, there seems to be a difference worth noting between "industries that currently employ a large number of the population with little transfer of utility to other industry" and "objectively basic needs for a society". Did you consider that it's because people need an income to survive? Employment is objectively a basic need for anyone who doesn't own sufficient capital being that they have nothing else to sell…

I didn't say that keeping people employed was a bad thing. I was making a distinction in definition, not in value.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that still true now?

Yes. One scary fact that I learned is that, in war games between China and the USA, China almost always wins due to superior production capacity. Those $100B American battle carriers and $40MM advanced fighter jets can be taken out by $50,000 rockets/missiles produced at a rate of hundreds or thousands per day.

Isn't the reverse also true?

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should go without saying that there are nuances in implementation. What I'm describing here is a fundamental tradeoff of JIT systems. If you get the wrong thing delivered it throws a bigger wrench into things because you don't have the buffer. Can you make this rare enough that the amortized cost is low enough to make JIT overall cheaper? Of course, that's why everyone does JIT.

> If you get the wrong thing delivered it throws a bigger wrench into things because you don't have the buffer. JIT, in Lean, does not mean no buffer, it means as little of a buffer as you can get away with. If you have issues with delivery like this on a regular basis, then you'd increase the buffer size (at least temporarily) and also take your suppliers to task for sending the wrong thing over and over. The buffer…

> JIT, in Lean, does not mean no buffer, it means as little of a buffer as you can get away with.

Eh... I would argue that JIT means making that buffer someone else's problem.

I was doing EDI at a logistics firm that contracted with Seagate who provided HDDs to Hitachi for their SANs around 2006. Hitachi was doing JIT for their manufacturing, Seagate however was just speculating Hitachi's demand and literally stockpiled HDDs in this firms warehouses geolocated next to Hitachi's factories.

We would pickup stock from Seagate and ship it to these warehouses where they would remain Seagate's property until Hitachi requested it, then we would simply transfer ownership to Hitachi.

Interestingly, we used rail shipping as a buffer to reduce warehouse size by sending freight on slow/cheap/indirect routes.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#446

As Taleb likes to say, an efficient system is the opposite of a robust system, kind of by definition. We are now witnessing the effects of our modern hyper-efficient just-in-time global manufacturing system.

[flagged]

No, the government restricts facility size. Look up “Certificate of Need laws” if you’d like more information.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t positive feedback require a positive loop gain? Right now, not enough chips are available to make new chips. So the loop gain is less than zero, damping the output recursively.

I'm also confused by the confusion here... probably naive pattern matching? Reminds me of TAing undergrad courses where you could get more than half the class to confuse "positive feedback" and "negative feedback" on a midterm by just giving examples where stability = bad :)

Grandparent gives the choices of ‘positive exponent growing against time’ or ‘negative exponent damping out against time’. Here we have a positive exponent damping (reducing) the output over time, because it’s value is less than one, resulting in a negative loop gain. The Wikipedia article linked up thread defines positive feedback as having positive loop gain, and negative feedback negative loop gain.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#448
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't TSMC working on expanding into the US?

They are indeed, in Arizona. First they are going to have employees train on-site in Taiwan (will get housing for themselves and their families for duration).

This makes it easier for the US to spin up more, since we gain more trained workers who understand these processes.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, soon after posting I realised I was referring to Asus/MSI/Palit etc. rather than Nvidia. It means either two levels of auction or the Nvidia chip sale is a % of the end unit sale.

> Palit I've never heard of this brand, are they big in regions outside North America? Or do they function as an ODM for other brands?

It's a Taiwanese company around since the 90s. They may be more Europe focused with a German office. I've never heard a US reviewer mention them but in the UK, they offer cards cheaper than the other brands. Beyond that, I don't know much about them. I've bought a couple of their cards and never had an issue so they get a thumbs up from me for N=2.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you get the wrong thing delivered it throws a bigger wrench into things because you don't have the buffer. JIT, in Lean, does not mean no buffer, it means as little of a buffer as you can get away with. If you have issues with delivery like this on a regular basis, then you'd increase the buffer size (at least temporarily) and also take your suppliers to task for sending the wrong thing over and over. The buffer…

> JIT, in Lean, does not mean no buffer, it means as little of a buffer as you can get away with. Eh... I would argue that JIT means making that buffer someone else's problem. I was doing EDI at a logistics firm that contracted with Seagate who provided HDDs to Hitachi for their SANs around 2006. Hitachi was doing JIT for their manufacturing, Seagate however was just speculating Hitachi's demand and literally stockpi…

The last bit works, as long as the slow transportation is closely controlled. I tried it once, in the end warehouse space was cheaper.

EDIT: What you describe sounds more like VMI, vendor managed inventory, than JIT. Both require half way reliable forecasts and collaborative planning so to worl properly. Have to agree so that both solutions tend to push inventory risk to suppliers. Done correctly, overall inventory does decrease so.

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