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You can also blame lean manufacturing. When the manufacturing lines stopped there was no reserve inventory left over to sustain any ongoing demand.
Blame can also be placed on things being manufactured globally. Any hiccup in the manufacturing of, then transporting of items to the plants will result in shut downs. It just snowballs out of control.
The pandemic is the major blame, throwing a wrench into these "just in time" systems.
There could be a big panic soon. Anyone currently connected to the manufacturing industry knows there's a real problem obtaining materials of all kinds, and it's not just chip shortages. It seems deliberate, especially because there has been such little reporting on it.
I'm connected to several industries due to my job, and here's just some of the messages I've been receiving from my contacts:
Are you experiencing similar shortages in your industry? Can you share?
I wouldn't call this 'my' industry, but I do deliver for said industry. (Still - damn, work at home jobs are hard to get.)
Restaurants - signs on the doors talking about 'chicken shortages', so no X meal available because of it....which seems weird because you could find chicken in the stores, easily. Guess it's just some suppliers?
Restaurants running out of product - mainly I've been seeing drinks (not alcohol). Have had to contact many a customer to let them know that restaurant doesn't have X drink, would they like Y, or, lately, restaurant simply has nothing to drink. Sorry, please contact (delivery company) for a refund.
Sure, it's not lumber or steel, but the 'shortages' are slowly creeping in to other areas with other items.
Going to the store, it takes them forever to restock some of their products - not because no one is working, but because they aren't getting the product in fast enough to keep up with demand. Simple things like milk, or ice cream, or an abundance of meat, like they used to have, now it's relatively decent amount of meat...but it's definitely slowing down in getting to the stores.
I'm not telling anyone to panic, but I am telling everyone who mocked preppers for years are going to wish they listened to those preppers. Those people will be fine, as this does get worse. Because it's going to get worse.
I'm not a prepper - not by choice, but because I've never had enough money to be a prepper. Buy extra this, that, and the other every time you go shopping - yeah, no place to store all that extra, let alone be able to afford all the extras for long term.
Best I can do right now is act like I still live in FL and am creating my, 'we could be screwed for 2 weeks after this hurricane', back up.
Bicycles. We live in a tourist area, and one of our local bike shops was closed almost every day this summer. When it was finally open, we went in to see about ordering a bike, and we were told that we wouldn't get one before November because there was a bicycle parts shortage. We were also told by our car dealership that they were having problems getting car parts, too. (We don't know if this affected all makes, but we have a Ford.)
I work on my computer as a 3D animator. Mainly technical stuff. Also gaming.
That RTX is impossible to find at a reasonable price.
2 reasons I can assume are the pandemic impacted alot of industries and some that are interconnected with chip manufacutring. And scalping. People use bots to buy up all the inventory off sites like Amazon/Bestbuy/NewEgg, and they sell them for $1k-$k.
It's disgusting. Same reason the PS5 is scarce.
Also crypto miners are responsible for ~25%. Things are better. Note this does not mean actually good. 6 months ago you could not get anything at retail. Now there are some. Note some /= good.
We've seen it coming and loaded up on everything we'd been considering getting or thought we might need over the last year. Saw some comments about this being temporary and someone said something about returning to normalcy. Nope. Not going to ever return to anything we considered "normal" two years ago and earlier. That "normal" is gone forever. Look forward and prepare for what you see coming.
Quick! Everyone run out and horde TP and new cars!
Yup, amazing what a perceived shortage will do. Q2 vehicle sales were basically normal levels. If you went to a dealer to kick a tire you would t know it. Certainly Ford had some supply issues. The best selling vehicle was not the F series. But GM and Fiat were largely there to pick up the slack for Ford with strong pickup sales. You'd think people would chill given the price, but they really have gone TP. TP made some sense. Cars are a durable good though.
The food processing industry was hit hard during the shutdown. Farmers were dumping perfectly good milk in the fields because the processing plants were closed. The was also a shortage of aluminum which affected many beverage drink manufacturers because no aluminum cans were available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow
I wouldn't call this 'my' industry, but I do deliver for said industry. (Still - damn, work at home jobs are hard to get.)
Restaurants - signs on the doors talking about 'chicken shortages', so no X meal available because of it....which seems weird because you could find chicken in the stores, easily. Guess it's just some suppliers?
Restaurants running out of product - mainly I've been seeing drinks (not alcohol). Have had to contact many a customer to let them know that restaurant doesn't have X drink, would they like Y, or, lately, restaurant simply has nothing to drink. Sorry, please contact (delivery company) for a refund.
Sure, it's not lumber or steel, but the 'shortages' are slowly creeping in to other areas with other items.
Going to the store, it takes them forever to restock some of their products - not because no one is working, but because they aren't getting the product in fast enough to keep up with demand. Simple things like milk, or ice cream, or an abundance of meat, like they used to have, now it's relatively decent amount of meat...but it's definitely slowing down in getting to the stores.
I'm not telling anyone to panic, but I am telling everyone who mocked preppers for years are going to wish they listened to those preppers. Those people will be fine, as this does get worse. Because it's going to get worse.
I'm not a prepper - not by choice, but because I've never had enough money to be a prepper. Buy extra this, that, and the other every time you go shopping - yeah, no place to store all that extra, let alone be able to afford all the extras for long term.
Best I can do right now is act like I still live in FL and am creating my, 'we could be screwed for 2 weeks after this hurricane', back up.
Yes....it is real. The big freeze in Texas shut down a major plastics raw material supplier because the liquid plastic solidified inside the pipes when they lost power. That has basically shut them down until the entire pipe system can be completely replaced. The component shortage is impacting any company that uses electronics in their products. The component lead times are just insane at 52 weeks or more in some cases.
This is affecting everyone globally, so I don't see why it would be intentional but rather resulted from the COVID lock downs when manufacturing production was halted for months.
Just paid certainly more than it would have been in normal times, but a good deal in the current market, for a 2019 off lease vehicle. The dealer had 0 new cars and ordering new was backed up into next year. But I expected that. Was also unsure of how labor/supply issues would affect quality on a new build had I decided to wait for that.
What I didn't expect was to find that one of my favorite interior detailing products was unavailable due to a "national plastic bottle shortage".
We've seen it coming and loaded up on everything we'd been considering getting or thought we might need over the last year. Saw some comments about this being temporary and someone said something about returning to normalcy. Nope. Not going to ever return to anything we considered "normal" two years ago and earlier. That "normal" is gone forever. Look forward and prepare for what you see coming.
I said that but meant with the caveat that we return to relative normalcy concerning the Pandemic. IMO once the Pandemic settles down to an Influenza-like scenario these supply/demand inequalities and disruptions will sort themselves out.
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