I think the cause was a little more complicated and we certainly aren’t helping any with our decisions, but the fact is if you need a car and the lot is empty, or needed TP and the shelves were empty, doesn’t matter the cause, result is the same.
At least one company local or within the US anyway was attempting to tool up to make chips. It’s not easy though and I think it was going to take them at least several months to get the equipment, space, and staff ready to produce. Time we get back to being more self-sufficient.
So far oil and filters seem to be holding up but like I said the filters at AZ were $10 each or $2.88 from Rock.
It’s what Ford and GM have been talking about, Building to order for most models instead of flooding the lots with random builds that have to be heavily discounted.
You may be right 'cuse my crystal ball is kinda clouded and donuts are kinda pricely but I’ve got a better idea.
If in 12 months you’re right, I take a try of that stuff you all call Texas whiskey and if I’m right, you take a try of some of that good old Maryland Rye.
No matter how good or bad the prediction (or the whiskey) seems like a good bet.
The engines are less of a financial burden than the “chips”.
Computers, modules, instrument clusters, displays, switches etc. have processors and these parts can cost in the hundreds of dollars. No manufacture can warehouse a years supply of these parts, there can be as many as 50 computers in a vehicle and a shortage of any one of these can stop an assembly line.
Maybe dealers don’t pay as much as you might think. After delivery, the dealer pays interest on the vehicle until it is sold. The they pay it off after getting payment from the buyer. That is the reason why manufacturers have internal lending arms.
The other problem is you don’t want outdated computers. Many parts that go into a vehicles are versioned. Especially electronic parts. These newer versions usually have more features and fix previous problems. They are backward compatible with their previous parts. If for some reason a bug was detected that needed to be corrected. A fix is engineered and then next versions will have the fix and any car manufacturer who orders the part will get this update. If the manufacturer ordered ALL the parts they ever needed for potential sales then the car manufacturer could potentially be sitting on tens of thousands of bad parts. They can either knowingly install these bad parts and wait for the potential costly warranty repairs or wait for the designed fix part.
Just In Time inventory has been proven to save manufacturers and customers a lot of time and money. It’s a proven method of manufacturing. It produces significantly less waste and faster and more reliable production.
I’m Geezing but I remember when the Japanese were beating the pants off of US manufacturers and production methods including Just In Time were being adopted in the US.Some ideas like Total Quality were brilliant but others, not so much.
The Japanese JIT relied on domestically controlled “captive” suppliers. i.e. If I can “outsource” switch production and dictate product specifications to a small supplier in the next city and become a customer for 90% of their producation, I can avoid my higher internal labor costs while still enforcing my quality and delivery requirements.
Great idea except what happens when I no longer “control” the supplier and the supplier is no longer 100 miles away? Well you see the result.
The bottom line is that in a Free Market manufactures properly have a short term viewpoint focused on profits, which generally benefits us all but there’s also a need for some long term direction which is the role of the Government.
While I’m a huge advocate of Free Markets and minimal Government intervention there’s still a role for the Government in critical industries and yeah, it will cost us.
We saw the result of the Oil Embargo and invested our tax dollars in tax breaks for domestic production and likewise we can invest our tax dollars in incentives to assure a minimal capacity for domestic production of other critical products whether it’s chips, shoemaking (the boots on the ground) or bullets which were in short supply during our last war.
I thought you were going to say personal protective gear during our current war instead of bullets, when they not only cornered the market on the production but also quickly re-collected the supply that was available. And I remember during the last outbreak where 3M in Minnesota began running three shifts round the clock producing the necessary face masks to meet US demand. Didn’t take too many years for all that local supply to go south. We were/are asleep at the switch. Not to mention flat screens, military electronics, medicines, etc.
One supplier in the US: Lake City Army Ammunition, a Government Owned, Contractor Operated facility. DoD tells Northrop Grumman what to produce, and they make it. How is this related to dependence on overseas suppliers?
It all seems reasonable to me. The companies have reasonable concerns about proprietary data and the Commerce Dept. needs some of it to resolve the issues that the Federal Administration tasked them to work on. Commerce doesn’t have a good reason to share proprietary information since their people not the government in general can’t legally make money off it. I have worked with high tech partners that would share some things with an NDA in place, but there are other things they would never share. I think unauthorized sharing of proprietary data that is legally obtained is industrial espionage and I would start with less important secrets and see how Commerce manages the interface.
I think you’re underestimating the power of the Market as a check on Government, an example was the Subaru Brat.
When the government laid a protectionist tariff on imports of small pickups, defining them as having seating for less than 4 people, Subaru immediately added 2 backwards facing seats in the truck bed. Useless as tits on a bull but got them around the tariff allowing them to fill a market demand for several years.
On the other hand, when oil companies and the market wanted to continue using cheap toxic lead in gas the government eventually banned it.
My point is that the Free Market and Government work together, limiting the worst ideas of each.
