Live data from Hacker News

Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

bbc.com

471–480 of 720 posts

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

#471

As a chip supplier, I'd be feeling a lot of pressure right now. In the short term you can squeeze and the tail can wag the dog for a bit. But longer term this opens the door wide open for new competitors in the market and / or vertical integration.

> But longer term this opens the door wide open for new competitors in the market and / or vertical integration. Not really. Chip fabrication requires enormous upstart cost - IIRC, TSMC plans with something like 10-20 billion $ - and a lot of time, to the tune of three years at least ( https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2033 ). There are not many companies in the world who have that amount of cash lying around, and eve…

IT doesn't have to be. You can be producing chips in a month if you are willing to pay. A clean room can be created, and the process of making of making chips one at a time in labor intensive processes is known. Just that nobody is willing to pay $50k each for their chips, and you need to get that price to pay for all the skilled labor to make a chip one at a time in a lab.

It takes years to setup a fab, but in the end it is a lot more cost effective, which is nobody is bothering to do the manual process even though we know it will work.

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

#472

So the new car thief will yank the computer(s) out of newer cars, sell them on the black market.

No, because the computer is tied to the VIN, and you need a dealer to change that. Dealers will check to see if the VIN is stolen.

Not all cars have that, manufactures have been using the above to stop theft for years.

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

#473

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

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:…

Cost isn't the issue, it's that we have incompetent buffoons as presidents these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc

That's what a president sounds like.

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

#474

Can someone explain to me why this wasn't the case before covid? Are the companies who are ahead of the automakers "in line" ordering more than before covid?

Cars are not a large market compared to cell phones and other users of ships. Cars are louder than the rest, but not bigger.

They typical car lasts 10-15 years. Cell phones about 2. More people have a cell phone than a car. Sure the car has more chips, but not by enough to make them bigger than phones. (Phones and cars mostly don't use the same process)

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

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

JIT and VMI go hand-in-hand, they aren't mutually exclusive. Implementing JIT is to impose VMI on your suppliers.

The interesting thing was that Seagate avoided managing inventory by outsourcing to the logistics firm. The stock was technically Seagate's until it was ordered by Hitachi but the logistics company took immediate possession as pallets rolled out of the factory.

> The last bit works, as long as the slow transportation is closely controlled.

It didn't need to be controlled, just scheduled. You knew you need x units by d. The factory output n per week, so you could stagger shipments by way of different lines.

All of the inventory was tracked by serial numbers and it was interesting to watch it move because supply was often delivered to the warehouse out of order or shipments weeks apart arrived simultaneously.

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

#476
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Those exist because the hospitals are privately owned. An area doesn't want hospital companies getting into a pricing war and then both going under leaving the area without hospital service at all.

There'd be no reason for it with a public health care system.

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

#477
post #18
post #2

This so-called “transitory inflation” is really starting to seem like it will parlay into full blown inflation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/18/opinion/infla... "In July, some of these sectors (used cars in particular) experienced a big deceleration in inflation, bolstering the argument" https://news.yahoo.com/us-used-car-bubble-burst-141009925.ht... "The price index for used vehicles rose 0.2% in July, after having risen at least 7.3% in each of the previous three months. The category was one of the few, along…

Regardless of prior academic work, Krugman's Twitter and NYT opinions are blatantly partisan rather than scientific. Whatever he says, do the opposite. https://contrakrugman.com/ (edit: slightly more specific and less ad-hominem)

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many tomahawks does it take to destory these factories?

So, apparently the best opening salvo is to take out USA comms satellites and that essentially cripples American offensive capabilities. Modern tomahawks are heavily reliant on comms networks to hit long-range ground targets.

Plus, any destroyer launching these at targets deep in Chinese territory will be within range of Chinese missiles. And, as we saw in Syria, Russian air defense systems are pretty effective against Tomahawks, and we should expect Chinese systems to be at least as effective.

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

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In UK, where NHS is publicly owned, it was actually policy to have 90% occupancy of ICU beds. If it was less than that, the "extra" beds would be removed.

Do you have a source for that quite extraordinary claim?

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

JIT and VMI go hand-in-hand, they aren't mutually exclusive. Implementing JIT is to impose VMI on your suppliers. The interesting thing was that Seagate avoided managing inventory by outsourcing to the logistics firm. The stock was technically Seagate's until it was ordered by Hitachi but the logistics company took immediate possession as pallets rolled out of the factory. > The last bit works, as long as the slow tr…

The way I used was VMI to avoid the limited flexibility of JIT, bit yes both concepts tackle the same problem. What you describe sounds like a lot of fun to run on a daily basis, would have loved to do that!
Post reply on HN