Supply Crisis
 

It kills me that so many companies let their supply chains become so reliant upon one source point.

From a strategic standpoint, it’s supply chain management 101. This is a huge management failure by every company that has been severely impacted by one fire.

Tell me about it, I've been waiting 6 month's for my racer.It's finally in the workshop.

This is the risk inherent in Just In Time (JIT) inventory management. Companies have focused so much on cash management and keeping inventories lean, and pushed the burden onto their supply chain, that they have no cushion to fall back on in a shortage. Also supply chains have become so global that any hiccup somewhere else in the world has big ripple effects. Toyota, the progenitor of Lean and JIT, has actually done better than most in this environment because, although they outsource and keep inventories low, they’ve managed to keep most of their primary suppliers geographically close.

Supply Crisis
 

Agree Tony. Obviously most companies didn’t ‘stress test’ their supply chains for potential disasters. Then ranking them by likelihood and financial impact to guide decisions to guard their businesses if it happened.

Typically, that would involve having second suppliers/sources and or holding inventory. There should be a balance between running operating costs and strategic failure. Inventory is usually held to buffer replenishment lead times but it can also be held to buffer against total supply line failures.

Craig & Tony, I can understand your point of view.
The just in time business is indeed risky.
But if demand is 90% up, it will always be difficult to follow with production I think.
My dealer says he doubled his sales in the last 12 months.
I heard the same story at other dealers.
I seems that everywhere in the world hifi sells so well, that manufacturers can't follow.

Exactly. And it's all about profit. Once JIT is adopted by a major industry player, it puts pressure on others to do the same. And so it goes - these aren't mission critical products.

I see some vendors struggling badly, where others are going along business as usual.

Two such manufacturers happen to both be located in Japan. Esoteric right now is the slowest, Accuphase is business as usual; go figure. :dunno:

All supply chains, all industries, globally, are currently affected.

We are now feeling the peak of the tightness, both from supply/inventory and from logistics perspectives, container shipping rates are up 500% from a year ago.

But this tightness will gradually ease as we shift into the post-Covid era.

And audio equipment demand will gradually return to more normal levels as people will be spending less time at home.

My 2 cts, fwiw.

Just don't buy anything made in Italy. Complete disaster.