Hi Hans,
Seems the pandemic posed a major impact to the just in time economy.
Between shipping and materials plus the added demand the on the shelf
supplies became exhausted.? The sudden changes caused the forecasting
the vendors use at all points in the chain to fail as it based on long term.
Short term transient events tends to cause excessive overreactions.? Its
partly due to human nature that results in panic stops when slow down
is really what is required.? That sudden stop ripples back to the vendors,
faster than the forecasts.? The start requests take longer, and are of
lower initial volumes, or are collectively overwhelming volumes and
are reacted to slower and lead times stretch out.? Its a train that is
primed to stop suddenly and then takes a long time to get moving
at the required speed where it will be inevitably late to arrive.? I've
seen this many times in the last 50 years.
One of the things you might do is now that you have a working stock look into?
working with a distributor for long term committed buy.? That is? a long term
contract with vendor to stock parts you have committed to buy over the
next year or fixed period for agreed price.? You know what you expect to
need so you have forecasting.? if you "kit" the micros with other parts known
to be needed that may help the pricing of the deal.??
Distributors like that as the parts are forecasted and they can
deal with the?chip vendors better who also like forecasted volumes
to help with their build scheduling and all that.? The big deal is that
if the distributor has 20-30 clients buying 10,000 pieces a year they
can work with the vendor for several million a year and that allows
them some clout.? Factories that make semiconductors never could
respond well to market changes especially those forcing spot market
purchases.
The down side is that if material supply should improve and prices drop
your committed at the higher price until you run out the commitment
at that price.? ?
Allison
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