The Ball and Supply Chain

This is where China achieves victory. All the PRC has to do is give priority to domestic manufacturers for small parts. Exports of finished items are preferred over exporting raw materials and parts. That was part of the Made In China 2025 plan.<p>If some other country starts to develop an in-house supply chain for some specific item, exports for that specific item are turned back on and possibly sold at a loss until the threat ceases. That&#x27;s what happened with rare earths. Remember rare earth shortages. China cranked up the price, Molycorp got the Mountain Pass CA mine going again, China dropped the price, Molycorp went bankrupt. Same strategy Amazon uses with Amazon Basics.[1]<p>This is an explicit national strategy of the PRC. There&#x27;s no secret about it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mining.com&#x2F;caught-between-rare-earths-and-chinese-dominance-the-story-behind-everything-no-one-is-telling-you-part-one&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mining.com&#x2F;caught-between-rare-earths-and-chines...</a>

Not to criticize the concept of JIT to avoid excessive inventory, but I&#x27;ve always argued that the flipside of JIT is turning every path in the supply chain into a <i>critical</i> path.

There are some really interesting companies that play alongside this space. The one I&#x27;m familiar with is Z2Data [1] (not affiliated).<p>They provide component-level part risk and sourcing information factoring everything from active litigation against sub-tier suppliers to geopolitical risk affecting associated manufacturing facilities and supply lines. I rarely encounter data as a service in my line of work. I usually think of that as typically market research, so it&#x27;s been interesting getting a different angle on that.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.z2data.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.z2data.com&#x2F;</a>

You look for reasons and inevitably get handed the same old story; the pandemic. Except this was happening before the pandemic. Yes, the problem is worse now, but components having been getting difficult to obtain for a while now.<p>It&#x27;s consolidation of manufacturers worldwide and centralization of production in select parts of Asia. Lack of competition, in other words.

&gt; Just-in-time works really well when it works really well. But the ripple effect of a global pandemic upon every sector of the globe...causes a lot of companies to feel the immobilizing weight of the ball attached to the supply chain.<p>We are now feeling the problems that come with the limits of this kind of global supply chain (which is the outcome of a political-economic project which has been underway, outside the spotlight of mainstream media coverage, for about three decades). The problem and possible solutions are inevitably more political than technical (who gets to decide where things are made, how, and how much is not something the average citizen who has to bear the brunt of the effects has any control over--a political problem).<p>I also recently learned about how single-use production techniques exacerbated the supply chain fragility, esp. as regards the US covid response. Interesting stuff. Big, long-term problems.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;exhaust.fireside.fm&#x2F;18" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;exhaust.fireside.fm&#x2F;18</a>

Parts that are not available on Mouser or Digi-key are available in their thousands on Aliexpress and similar sites often for 10x normal price.