Seriously, if there’s some less-than-absolutely-essential item you *must* have — from a particular brand of food / beverage to a loved one’s holiday gift — stock up now, if you possibly can. If only because the swelling panic about shortages in the national media means that everybody else will be doing so!
1/ The stories that started appearing over the summer about the state of global supply chains have been ramping up, and I thought it would be worth it to collect some of the articles documenting the disruption/catastrophe/reality of it all.
— Matthew Hockenberry (@hockendougal) September 16, 2021
3/ Same goes for Ann Koh's piece, "One Stuck Box of Fertilizer Shows the Global Supply Chain Crisis" which offers an equally interesting (though perhaps less charming) object to follow. https://t.co/eAoZcDnjY8
— Matthew Hockenberry (@hockendougal) September 16, 2021
4/ But smaller pieces of the story are everywhere. The New York Times framed the situation as "a painful lesson in how interconnected economies are across vast distances," with "delay and shortages in any one place rippling out nearly everywhere." https://t.co/41usMp8KpM
— Matthew Hockenberry (@hockendougal) September 16, 2021
6/ While "the normal number of container ships at anchor is between zero and one," this week a high of 56 ships were waiting in California. Capacity is at an all time high, a result of demand, administrative backlogs, and labor shortages. https://t.co/U1PWQXGeU1
— Matthew Hockenberry (@hockendougal) September 16, 2021
8/ Even before the pandemic, labor hadn't scaled the same way.
— Matthew Hockenberry (@hockendougal) September 16, 2021
There’s a lot more to the thread — 40 tweets in all — and I’m very grateful to Mr. Hockenberry for collecting all this data. Everything is interconnected, and all the seams are fraying at once.
A Good Time for Some Pet Updates?
FelonyGovt
We were at the Port of Los Angeles yesterday and saw for ourselves the large number of container ships stacked up as shown in the photo above. It was really eye-opening.
H.E.Wolf
There are interactive port maps here (Los Angeles used as an example):
marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ports/87/USA_port:LOS%20ANGELES
NotMax
@FelonyGovt
Just wait until there’s a shortage of containers….
//
WereBear
You mean there’s a downside to making stuff the cheapest possible way?
Cermet
Heaven forbid if we have to pay a few dollars more for more junk we don’t really need. While certainly we need the ability to mfg some essential items, most of what the poor chinese workers make under terrible conditions for little money isn’t essential at all. Less pressure on them is a nice up side to this (though, not their longshore workers or shipping crews – this creates far more pressure on them.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
Publishers and bookstores are being notified that there may be delays in book production. Thank god for ebooks.
OzarkHillbilly
We will survive.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Those electrons have to come from somewhere.
hrprogressive
This is what happens when we prioritize shareholder returns literally above anything else.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
As long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive.
ETtheLibrarian
I ran into a very interesting interview in Time with the head of the Port of Los Angeles where he says our biggest export right now is air.
time.com/6091238/supply-chain-gene-seroka-port-of-los-angeles/
Oh, and do your Christmas shopping now.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Baud: So how am I still here?
WhatsMyNym
I’m seeing shortages, but there’s no obvious link to imports for these products. Seems very random.
NeenerNeener
I’ve got enough cleaning products from the first COVID-fueled shortage to last for a few years, but it sounds like I should start stocking the tub in the spare bathroom with toilet paper packages again.
And it’s gift cards for everybody again this Christmas!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Yes, but they don’t have to be printed and shipped.
WhatsMyNym
@ETtheLibrarian:
Washington has been exporting high end hay when the container prices are low enough (to feed horses mostly).
John Revolta
Huh. It’s almost as if “just-in-time” inventory practices ain’t such a great idea after all.
WaterGirl
Does this mean that rather than spending down the supplies I accrued last year… I should be adding more?
Kirk Spencer
“… [P]rofessionals study logistics.”
For what it’s worth those of us in the supply chain have been staring at this and related issues for a few years now. Covid just exposed the issues to everyone.
Ships are covered in what was posted. Other rough spots?
– Trucks (US especially). For several reasons there’s a shortage of long haul drivers. The most frequent work-around is intermodal transportation – put the loaded trailer on a train to point X, then use a driver to get from X to Z. But that still may call for long haul drivers, or it might be
– Trucks part B aka last mile. In addition to drivers we run into getting into the actual delivery point. Traffic, deteriorating infrastructure, workers (drivers and loaders), urban transport restrictions (truck size, fuel type in certain locations) and more. Just for a thought exercise, do you really think Amazon wants their delivery drivers working from 6 am to 9 pm (worst case rare, but daily overtime is common)?
– Intermodal also runs into the rail issues. This one isn’t as bad in Europe or China, but for most of the rest of the world rail is another infrastructure issue. Load and unload points are high-congestion points.
The solution to many of these is “more money spent wisely”. Improvements in infrastructure and automation plus significant changes in personnel management (wages, hours, tasks, etc) are the big ones. Necessary changes in energy use from petroleum/coal to whatever it’s going to be are also affecting the whole supply system.
The real pain for trying to stock up, though (sorry, AL) is guessing right. The flow problems biggest frustration from my point of view is the irregularity. Not everything will be delayed at the same rate – some won’t be delayed at all, other things are so bad that the time to seek long term alternatives was yesterday.
Favorite case example for me is publishing. For this I’m going to outsource the post. Here’s a recent blog post from Kristine Kathryn Rusch. (Authors among us please take the time to read it.)
WaterGirl
@John Revolta: No one could have predicted. //
Another Scott
CalculatedRiskBlog keeps an eye on LA container traffic and lots of other economic numbers. His latest:
If one squints a bit at the first graph, it looks like imports have plateaued (probably at least partially because of capacity issues). I would assume that things will get better after October.
Anecdotally, I’ve been looking at 8TB NAS hard drives and prices are getting closer to “normal” so it looks like some supply chain issues are working themselves out over time, but we’re not there yet.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack (phone)
Johnny Carson on some fake or panic shortage (toilet paper?) years ago: “I’m just stocking up before the hoarders get here.”
RandomMonster
I work for an electronics manufacturer, and there have been challenges getting components. Next year is going to be interesting.
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor: One of the thing I’ve been pleasantly startled by is the rapid publication of old specialized reference books. E.g. I recently ordered a 1980s book of tabulated optical properties that has been out of print for ages. It’s now available as a paperback on Amazon. It was printed in Middletown, Delaware the day after I ordered it (as indicated on the bottom of the last page) and I had it in my hands a day after that. I assume that much of the printing industry is heading that way eventually.
Hang in there!
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@John Revolta: Follow me around a Walmart some time and listen to me curse.
Baud
@Steeplejack (phone):
Hey-oooohhh!
scav
Watching The Formerly United Kingdom juggle this plus the Brexit-side effects has been illuminating. Bit of a canary situation, they are.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Another Scott: That sounds like Print on Demand (POD) which is what my publisher uses too. It means they don’t need an upfront investment to do a big print run and maybe get stuck with books that don’t sell. It’s usually more expensive per unit, which is one reason my paperbacks are kind of pricey.
My guess is that in the near future, books will never be truly out of print.
Martin
@NotMax: There already is. We’re about 10% below demand.
Mike in NC
Went to five stores recently and all were out of our preferred canned cat food.
JoyceH
I wish I’d stocked up on a couple of those at home COVID tests when I saw them on Amazon and in stock at CVS. Now I’m having some kind of allergy or sinus thing, and if I had one of those tests I’d use it but I cant find them anywhere.
CaseyL
The financial titans have spent the last few decades paring down expenses in the name of ever-increasing revenues, making everything “more efficient.” But that kind of efficiency relies on all the supporting system staying exactly the same forever, which…isn’t a good bet. Particularly since those selfsame financial titans have been sabotaging the supporting systems, cutting more and more corners until the thing they were cutting corners from is gone altogether.
It’s like an anorectic facing a real-world famine: there is no resilience in the system.
Starting to remind me a bit of the collapse of the Bronze Age empires in the Mediterranean. “First slowly, then suddenly” indeed. Heavily dependent on mutual trade, a few disruptions to the most essential supply lines, disruption spreads but people try to go on as if things will eventually settle down, putting more pressure on one another and the system… and then, everything falls apart. (Yes, the “Sea People” dealt the final blow, but there are theories that they were at least in part refugees fleeing the advance wave of the collapse.)
I expect things will hobble along adequately for a while – until the next pandemic, or the US defaults on its debt, or the final collapse of supply of some key material/component (say, a rare earth that becomes exhausted; or – my favorite – water shortages in entire regions), and then…*poof* it’s all gone.
MagdaInBlack
In my line of work, collision repair, we are having more and more issues with back-ordered parts. 2-3 weeks for some and what we call “galactic back order” which means they have no delivery date.
My local gas station is out of the oatmeal cookies I like because of a raisin shortage. FFS.
Urza
I work for one of the largest consumers of electronics on the planet. Keeping things running right now is challenging. I’m not sure how things aren’t worse than they are. Hard drives are a 5 month lead time for orders, we use 10% of the drives on the planet so we can’t exactly shop around or even pay extra to cut the line. Other parts have gone from 1 month, to 54 weeks to now 80 weeks from order to arrival. Because of a $1 part using common semiconductors.
The giraffe is one thing, eventually if our parts don’t start arriving sooner other businesses and the internet in general will be affected. Personally i’m planning on it being like this into 2023 at least. But if we’re squeezed on replacement parts as well as new capacity eventually thats a problem somewhere.
Urza
Aside from the problems at my own company, I have a friend that works in procurement for a large grocery chain. While the food itself is not necessarily in short supply, the packaging and transportation for it is. Which is why the stock at stores is low and prices are rising.
Martin
@Kirk Spencer: Yeah, Port of LA/LB has always struggled to get containers out of port. We built a fancy dedicated rail to downtown, electrified it, and then couldn’t get electric freight locomotives. The lack of connection/throughput from the Alameda corridor out of the LA basin is a problem.
I’m not sure to what degree this can be solved by continuing to ramp up the port of LA/LB or whether that pacific traffic growth should go to other ports, possibly new ones.
Suzanne
Other than for my immediates, all gifts that I give are handmade (pottery) or consumable (food, skincare). But I give a lot of clothes for Christmas to my kids and husband and SuzMom, especially now that we are in PGH and need more cold-weather gear. I would like to start shopping for that stuff now, but it isn’t even in the stores yet. They’re doing fall season stuff.
I really want to go on a trip, but not until the kids are vaccinated.
Uncle Cosmo
@scav: They could devolve it into four separate-but-equal nations under a loose association – call it, mmm, a Federation Under Common Kingship or somesuch… ;^p
Martin
@John Revolta: No, it’s generally a good idea, but it requires investment in throughput rather than warehousing (which also carries some environmental challenges).
Fair to say that the US has made almost no investments in the kind of infrastructure needed for this shift over the past 30 years. These kinds of shortages aren’t as common in other parts of the world. Electronics, sure, for a wider set of reasons, but day to day items are mainly a US/UK problem. UK magnified by Brexit. US by lack of infrastructure.
John Revolta
@OzarkHillbilly: Sounds like fun! Which’ll show you what things have been like with me lately. Do I need reservations or anything?
Suzanne
Oh, and I will note that I was in Whole Paycheck yesterday, and lots of the shelves were empty and messy. I went to the deli counter to order a pizza for my kids, and they said that they were understaffed and wouldn’t be running the pizza ovens until Sunday. It looked like they had about half of the amount of staff that they would normally have.
OzarkHillbilly
@John Revolta: Nope.
dnfree
There were no Grape Nuts Flakes for months during the pandemic. The crunchy little regular Grape Nuts, yes, but not the flakes. MONTHS. There were even articles about it. Just one of the many oddball things. I don’t look forward to all the little things like that being unavailable again and no one knows why. Toilet paper is at least predictable.
dnfree
@Suzanne: the Meijer near us now sometimes has the rotisserie chickens but no longer has the fried chicken pieces. They said they can’t hire enough people to staff that area.
trollhattan
@ETtheLibrarian:
Good interview. Glad he cites the harmful effects of all the Trump-Navarro tariff idiocy. “Who knew there would be side-effects?”
Everybody.
Martin
@Urza: Yeah, electronics is a whole other kettle of frogs. You have market players like Apple who are exceptionally good at securing their components at every level, and can pay top dollar for supply, in part because of their scale. It’s amusing listening to these automotive executives shocked that they’re not the kingmakers in the electronics market and have to, you know, plan and pay above bottom dollar.
All of the money people would have spent on vacations and other social things didn’t get spent, and a lot of it shifted into electronics. PS5s to stay entertained, tablets and laptops for work from home and Zoom, etc. Really busted demand projections in a lot of places.
My son is an engineer at a company in the semi supply chain, and they can’t get components, and if they can’t get components, then the supply chain can’t expand. Biden really needs to pull out the defense production act so the semi industry can get components ahead of other customers, simply so they can build out capacity.
germy
trollhattan
Try to keep a straight face while reading this. Go ahead, just try.
“Spicey needs his big boy nap.”
Suzanne
@dnfree: I find myself shopping so much less now than before the pandemic. I wasn’t a big shopper before, but now it’s a significant decline. This situation is making it even less attractive to go to a store.
Urza
While this sounds like a good idea. And might work for many things. It takes 2-3 years to stand up a semiconductor factory. Possibly longer right now as there’s a shortage of the parts for new semiconductor plants. If it started when Covid did, we ‘might’ get more factories sometime next year. But we did not start new factory building when Covid did because no one knew what it might mean.
Early on places like the car companies cut orders which allowed the increased need elsewhere to be taken care of in 2020. But that need did not decrease and now everyone else is back to needing as much as they can get.
eclare
@MagdaInBlack: It took six months for a relative’s car to be repaired after a wreck. Dealer couldn’t get the parts. I don’t know what brand of car.
JoyceH
@Suzanne: I haven’t been into a store in months. I get my groceries by curbside pickup and for everything else there’s Amazon.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Yesterday, Trader Joe’s looked like it always does. ??♀️
Cameron
I know this is a bit off-topic, but I thought it was worth sharing: returntonow.net/2020/10/12/forest-garden-with-500-kinds-of-food-requires-only-a-few-hours-of-work-pe…
MagdaInBlack
@eclare: For us, it seems the newer the car, the longer for the parts.
Kelly
A friend of mine works for a small gas engine parts wholesaler. They have a $440k backlog of parts on order with no firm delivery dates. In the past this would be $10k to $20k. In the past the backlog would be obscure stuff now it’s parts that used to be delivered in a few days.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan: Cripes. Psaki slaps them down. With Spicer, they smelled blood in the water from day one.
eclare
@ETtheLibrarian: Very good interview, he sounds competent.
Martin
@Urza: You’re correct about that, but my son’s company builds the controllers that coordinate the factory, and they can’t get components even to ship replacements for failed units so just keeping existing factories running is becoming a problem. And that timeline is true for more cutting edge processes, but a lot of the shortages are for components that could be made with 20 year old equipment, so expanding existing factories would make a lot improvement, but even that is proving difficult.
Suzanne
@JoyceH: I took Spawn the Younger to buy some new clothes for school (in-person!). We went to the big mall here. I realized when we were planning the trip that I hadn’t ever been there, and we’ve lived here over a year. It was comforting, in a way, and I enjoyed the people-watching and window shopping aspect.
JPL
@debbie: When I was in T.J’s a few days ago, most had on masks, and they had plenty of wine. ?
eclare
@MagdaInBlack: Good point! Yes, it’s a fairly new suv type car. Maybe Toyota?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Will we?
dmsilev
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Spicer started out with a blatant lie (about the inauguration crowd size) and that set the tone right away. He should have tried either not telling blatant lies or not going to work for someone for whom blatantly lying was just a normal part of his day.
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor: When he came out lying on the first day (uuge crowds for TFG, IIRC) and insulting them, what did he expect?
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
He’s lying, still.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@WhatsMyNym:
The key word is obvious. Just because you can’t see the connection doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s always possible that there’s some tiny missing piece that you don’t appreciate that’s keeping the whole thing from working.
JoyceH
Hey, this is anecdotal and I wondered if anyone else had heard it. A couple months ago, I ordered a new sofa. One of those ‘you order it, we make it’ things, and I was told it would take about five months. The lady at Ethan Allen told me that all furniture orders everywhere were backlogged. She said that there’s ONE factory that makes the chemicals needed to manufacture the foam that goes into upholstery, and that factory is located in Texas. When they had that power outage last winter, the factory shut down and also lost all their inventory – they’ve been playing catch-up ever since. Anyone else hear that?
Belafon
@hrprogressive: we thought we could get away with just-in-time production and that employees were just another widget.
Scout211
I purchased a new washer 2 years ago from a local appliance store that delivers and installs. A few weeks ago, my dryer died So I wanted to purchase the matching dryer from the same store. They told me that they could get it in by December and it now costs $400 more than in 2019. I couldn’t wait until December so I looked at the Big Box stores for availability. .
I found it at Best Buy and purchased it there but then had to find an installer who could also do the propane conversion. Talking with the guy who did the installation (he also does repairs), he said he has been waiting for parts for some of his customers’ appliance repairs for months, some for nearly a year. Whirlpool is the worst, but they actually own most of the brands. My washer and dryer are both Maytag but owned by Whirlpool.
The store personnel and the repair guy were both really frustrated with the supply delays for appliances and parts.
sacrablue
I have waited 20 years to renovate my kitchen. I’ve saved enough to have a completely new layout, removing walls and giving me enough space for more than one person to function at a time. In addition to everything getting way more expensive I still can’t get the range that I want. It hasn’t been available since February. I can’t even order the cabinets yet because the manufacturer can’t get the stain pigment for the color that I want. Even if it was available, the wait time for the cabinets has gone from 3-4 weeks to 16-20 weeks. My contractor wants me to chose different cabinets but I’ve waited for 20 years so I’ll wait a little longer.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
Yes, print on demand means there’s really no reason for ordinary books to go out of print anymore. There may be a few special cases that demand very specific printing techniques not amenable to typical print on demand technology (e.g. high quality art books that need better quality color printing), and there will continue to be niche books that are deliberately printed that way or that were intended to be limited editions. But outside that kind of thing, it’s easy enough to keep the electronic version and print on demand.
Urza
@JoyceH: My mother is also waiting I think 8 months now on her new sofa. I thought it was the wood shortage, had not heard about the chemical shortage.
Other MJS
Hyperoptimized == brittle, I reckon.
dnfree
@JoyceH: we just ordered a sofa and were told the delivery would be 4-5 months at the earliest, but they didn’t specify what was the holdup. They also said it was a problem for every furniture company.
Urza
@Martin: This is actually worse. Losing the internet or the servers for any particular company is bad. Losing the factories to keep them running is worse.
This would be a great time for planned economics. If we weren’t all fighting for the parts the factories could get what they need first in order to keep everything else running.
JoyceH
Hey, does anyone else remember when you could get your car made to order like a sofa? When I was a kid, my dad traded in his Impala every year. He’d go down to the Chevy dealership and come home with brochures about all the features of the new model, and a sheet that showed literally DOZENS of different paint colors. We’d all squabble about what color we wanted for the new car, and eventually he’d go back to the dealership and order his car, which was made in the factory with the color and all the features he’d ordered. Now it seems like you go down to the lot and pick out a car, and there are at most ten color options. Can you still get ‘ bespoke’ cars?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NotMax: There is. This has all been going on for like a year now.
Another Scott
@JoyceH: I haven’t heard that, specifically. But it reminds me…
My step-mom used to be fairly high up in management in L’eggs. There was one time in the ’80s that some chemical factory in Belgium or someplace had to shut down for weeks. It ended up messing up their pantyhose production because that factory was the main supplier of some critical starting polymer that they needed for yarn production…
It’s an old lesson that the MBAs refuse to learn. Just like with sensible pandemic response – if you’re successful, it looks like you over-reacted. Yeah, having multiple suppliers or resilient supply chains close to home or warehouses full of parts looks inefficient. Until something goes wrong…
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Other MJS:
It depends on what it’s hyperoptimized for. You can hyperoptimize for efficiency under current conditions, which will make things brittle. You could also optimize for resiliency, which would make it robust, but at the cost of efficiency.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WhatsMyNym: Going by work, it comes down to what management team understands shipping the best and willing to pay more to force their product threw the bottlenecks. My manager who mostly runs the outsourcing had a two hour presentation on what was involved getting stuff in to the US.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: From what I’ve been reading on the rumor mills, the Samsung Note21 didn’t come out due to chip shortages and the Sony A7IV has been delayed for the same reason.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Mike in NC: My cats are hooked on Fancy Feast Creamy Delights (chicken and tuna). Originally got them at the local Wal-Mart, and then when the supply got spotty a couple of years ago (sometimes they were on the shelves, and sometimes not), I started ordering through Chewy. Originally the orders would arrive the next day, almost like magic. The supply center was apparently in Nevada somewhere. For the last six months, the orders take a week or a little more to arrive (starting from the East Coast), and now they are starting to be out of stock sometimes. Sigh. I hate it when the news on things like this affects me personally! :-)
Oh, and my husband and I have finally decided to get a washer and dryer, and the ETA is apparently next April, if we’re lucky.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
You can still get a lot of customization in a car if you buy a high-end model. But there’s generally been some limit. They usually made different options packages that bundled a bunch of features together. As in all things, there’s a tradeoff. If you bundle the features into a few options packages, it’s generally cheaper than if you offer them all individually.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Worth keeping in mind the kind of beating management is taking too to defend their staffs. We really got to change this mentality that customers can just treat service staff like utter shit.
CaseyL
@JoyceH: I didn’t know you could do that even way back when! Sounds pretty cool, going over the brochures.
Nowadays, unless you’re getting something very top of the line (in which case you generally can customize to some extent) a lot of customization is done after-market, via third parties. At least, that’s my impression.
Suzanne
@JoyceH: I didn’t hear about that vendor specifically, but I have heard that furniture is incredibly difficult to get right now. West Elm is apparently notoriously bad.
trollhattan
@Scout211:
There was a yuge shortage of fridges earlier this year, no idea whether that still is happening. We had to replace our very senior washer and dryer in spring and luckily, the exact models I wanted were in stock, but in the Bay Area so there was a bit of a delivery and install charge (plus disposing the old units). The good news was one company both sold and installed, so none of the nonsense of separate crews from two companies. Was super glad to have that work out, given the stories.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Which is pretty ironic since those are two rare companies that build their own imaging chips.
Scout211
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
See my post at #69. The Big Box stores do have washers and dryers in stock in their warehouses. They will deliver, set-up and haul-away (for a price). But if you can’t find what you want in stock, then you are out of luck. Their stock is limited and I was very lucky to find the one that matched my washer at Best Buy.
Mary G
I ordered a set of prehung double doors from Lowes to replace the ones I bought on Craigslist when the housemates moved in to turn the living room into a bedroom. They are “in stock,” but can’t be picked up or delivered until mid-October. It’s the same with every set I liked.
Suzanne
We replaced our dishwasher this summer and we had to wait about 12 weeks.
Kirk Spencer
@CaseyL: As a rule, heavy customization means higher labor, increased inventory, and more tools. All three hit the profit margin or the price point, both of which are main drivers for the executive decision makers.
It was less of an issue when “we had to do it anyway.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I have stories, lots of stories.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Scout211: I finally decided to get an LG HE washer and dryer and the local appliance store says it might be April before they are delivered.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I wouldn’t be surprised.
Riffing on your comment: But, as usual, the press simplifies everything too much. TSMC and Samsung and Intel and Micron aren’t big players in control chips for cars, etc. Motorola / Freescale / Infinion / Whatevrer-they-are-called-this-week is a big player in auto chips. They have a big plant in Texas that was knocked off line by the winter storm and power outages. Bringing up a semiconductor fab from a cold start is a huge undertaking (things have to be brought up carefully, everything has to be recalibrated, etc.) and it takes time. Processes, design rules, etc., are different for car chips (they have to handle batteries being installed backwards, they have to stay in spec for 10+ years, while PC chips don’t), so one can’t simply have Intel start cranking out chips for cars – even if they had the capacity (which they don’t).
So, there are pandemic demand issues, labor issues, weather issues, factory specialization issues, transportation issues, etc., that are all messing with the various supply chains now. There’s no one solution except for building more resilience into the production of critical products – everything from masks and disposable gloves to vaccine production to food and all the rest.
Cheers,
Scott.
RandomMonster
@Urza: The large company I work for makes…hard drives. So we’re definitely experiencing similar things!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: They do build their own sensors(Sony also supplies Nikon’s sensors), but I think it’s shortages in some of the commodity chips that they use in the products that they don’t produce.
Urza
Is it just semiconductors causing your delays or other parts as well? Do you have any insight into when the delays will start returning to somewhat normal?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: They must not be “in stock” at the local store, if we have the product in stock at the store, we can ship it within 12 hours. We had a delivery request that came in at about 9pm for a 6am delivery on Wednesday and busted our asses to get it ready for shipping, it was still there the next afternoon. The ASM who I got to help me get the staff(fork lift drivers) to get it ready was not pleased(poor guy is recovering from COVID).
Ohio Mom
@Cameron:
That was interesting. In another lifetime, I could dream about doing something similar (not here on my small suburban lot).
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Scout211: I live in a smallish town and really want to buy from the local appliance store rather than Home Depot, so I guess I’m stuck. One reason is that the local store won’t do repairs on anything not bought at their store, plus I want to keep the local store going.
CaseyL
@Suzanne: I needed to replace mine, had the make and model I wanted, and the (locally-owned) appliance store had sold its only one of them. The sales guy said I could wait 6 months or get something else now. I opted for the “something else now” (my DW was really on its last legs) and am happy with it. But I have a very basic DW.
trollhattan
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
April? As in 2022 April? Yikes!
Other MJS
@Roger Moore:
Excellent observation.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Reminds me that there was some earthquake or other in Japan (not the Great Quake) that took out a plant that supplied Olympus with imaging sensors. That caused all kinds of havoc. (They use Sony and what used to be Panasonic, since sold off.)
To your point, doesn’t really matter which component, just any old not-easily-replaced supplier will do. Last time I was car shopping navigation systems were hard to get because the same quake that took out sensor fabrication took out display screen fabrication.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Yup.
Similarly with oil production. Prices are well behaved as long as everyone can get enough for their needs. Once production is even a tiny bit lower than demand, prices can spike because if someone needs it they will pay whatever they have to to get it.
Auto or airline traffic, also too.
Bad things happen when there is not enough slack in systems of all sorts.
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@Another Scott: And we are seeing that lack of slack in hospitals, too.
Scout211
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I totally understand and feel the same way. I live rural and bought my replacement dishwasher and washer from the closest appliance store (about 20 miles away). They have the same policy of only repairing the appliances sold at their store. I couldn’t wait 3-5 months for a new dryer, though, since mine was toast. Luckily, I did find a guy who is an appliance repair person in another nearby town to install it and do repairs, if needed. I’m really happy to have found him and will call him in the future if I need any of our appliances repaired.
We’ve lived out here for 13 years and it’s times like this that remind me why most people prefer living in cities. Finding services like these locally is sometimes next to impossible.
MomSense
When we get past this current supply chain issue and the resulting shortages, we will still be failing to deal with the fact that there are not enough earths to supply all the raw material to sustain the level of production. We need six or seven earths to support our consumption. It doesn’t help that our economy is based on making and consuming more and more. I have no idea how we solve this problem but I have a feeling that it will be solved at some point just in a way that is unfair and disruptive.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott:
One of the classes I had to take for my weird hybrid undergrad degree was Operations Research, yup.
RandomMonster
@Urza: I’m afraid I don’t work on the ops side of things, so I don’t have any deep insight. I just see the effects when one our products gets delayed or we have to remove a feature because there’s a delay in getting some component from Asia. We managed okay this year, but I think next year could be more challenging.
Anoniminous
We use poles stuck in the ground, cord, two pieces of hinged wood, and the big fusion plant in the sky to dry our clothes.
Works great
Geminid
@trollhattan: A HVAC technician told me this May that the freeze in Texas set HVAC manufacturer Trane’s production back. Some vital molds were damaged and then the first set of replacements were faulty. His company was waiting for some commonly replaced assemblies. He was glad it had been a cool spring.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Scout211: What really gets me about the shipping problems is that there was a story in the London Review of Books maybe about a year ago about the revolution in shipping (i.e giant shipping containers, etc.) and it said the cost of shipping say a sweater from China to the US was practically nothing because of the efficiencies. How times have changed.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Scout211: We did use a local independent repair guy when the ice maker on our fridge broke (I had kept it limping along for years, but it finally died). I had called the local appliance store (which had sold it originally) but they were all booked up, as I remember. Anyway, the independent guy was great, the part came within a week, and all was good. I wonder what the story would be now.
Anoniminous
@Another Scott:
Since companies are now run for quarterly profit statements cutting slack and resilience is a Quick & Dirty way to boost short term earnings and give management a nice bonus in cash and their stock options.
Ditto with Just In Time. Assemblers love it because they can sluff-off the needed parts inventory, thus costs, on their suppliers. Works great … until Just In Time becomes You’ll Get It When You Get It.
MomSense
@Anoniminous:
I miss that so much. Now that we have been invaded by brown tail moths I’ve had to stop gaming the wash outside. Not a fan of hives.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Scout211: I’ve also reminded of when the thermostat on our Viking oven died. The store which had sold it to us originally no longer sold Vikings, so would not/could not repair it. The other local repair people also refused, and repair places in the nearest large town said I was too far away. Finally ordered the part and my wonderful husband installed it. Whew! It involved taking the door off. He couldn’t have done it except I managed to find a repair manual on line for consultation.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I was just in Wal Mart to pick up a prescription and was pleased to see everyone was masked. All the masks were over people’s noses. (Far NW Chicago suburb)
James E Powell
@MomSense:
The conviction that “free markets” will save us is planted so deep that even people who have been screwed by “free markets” believe it.
Another Scott
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Years ago an online friend sang the praises of ZChocolat.com in France. I thought it was nuts for him to regularly buy airlifted chocolate from France, and couldn’t figure out how they could stay in business given the high shipping costs, but apparently the business model worked for them.
I see that they had a fire in May and their offices burned to the ground. They hope to be back up and delivering by October 18.
:-(
I haven’t ordered from them in years, but they had good stuff.
(I typically get fancy gift chocolates from BurdickChocolate.com these days – they’re not across the ocean.)
Shipping costs need to be much higher to rationalize stuff like this. Many supply chain problems would be helped by more-local production. Carbon taxes can’t come soon enough, IMHO.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anoniminous
@MomSense:
There’s no problem now that we live in New Mexico. It wasn’t as much fun when we lived in Iowa and had to hang the laundry out in sub-zero weather.
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott: the critical question here is when my Intel stock will start rallying again
E.
@MomSense: I firmly believe that we are seeing the beginning of what you describe. It isn’t all pandemic related. I own a bakery. One of our best selling items is an olive sourdough made with very good kalamata olives. Most of those orchards burned down a few months ago (fires in Greece and also Turkey) from drought, extreme heat, and climate change. Flour prices are going through the roof because livestock producers are turning to grain to feed their herds because of a greatly reduced corn crop thanks to the heat and drought. Of course, grain yields are down too. Other things from sesame seeds to cranberries to every kind of nut are getting more and more expensive and scarce. This is only the very, very, very beginning of this journey, I’m afraid.
Scout211
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Now that’s impressive that your husband could make that repair. Mr. Scout has a PhD and would look at a project like that (or any household appliance repair) and declare, “Sorry, no. That job is above my pay grade.”
So it does sound like if you do find yourself needing a washer/dryer sooner than next April, you could contact one of the local repair guys and ask if they would install them for you and repair them in the future (if needed). Then you could look at the availability of the LG washer/dryer set at Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy or Costco.
I made the mistake of thinking I could keep my old dryer until it died and just call the store for a new one. It would have been so much better and cheaper if I had replaced them both in 2019. Sigh.
FelonyGovt
@sacrablue: We desperately needed a new oven when our old one stopped working. We ordered a new oven in January, and waited and waited… we just had it installed in July.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Another Scott: Yes, even at the time I thought the article was nuts. How could it possibly be cheaper to make a sweater in China and ship it to the US with no real shipping cost involved?!? Some of it did make sense, for example it described the revolution in oil tankers when they moved from carrying barrels of oil to making the tanker basically one huge barrel.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I see that your Representative, Sean Casten, will be on MSNBC’s “Velshi” tomorrow morning (8am Eastern Time, I think). Casten has a business background in clean energy, so I’m guessing he and Ali Velshi will talk about energy transition measures in the second infrastructure bill.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
My meth dealer is having trouble filling orders because of supply chain shortages
cain
What I’m hearing is that we need an infrastructure bill more than anything to deal with all those ships and what not. Just the kind of cudgel you need to smack some reluctant Democrats. The Republicans don’t give a shit – but their paymasters will.
Cermet
Living in the age of AGW (which was clearly stated by experts over the years would also include plagues) is just so interesting. The grift that just keeps on giving. If you have children, do warn them that this is just the minor beginnings of things that will get far, far more worse as they grow up. Don’t be surprised that future generations curse you when you get old.
As for current supply shortages, really looks to be lack of planning and bad luck on timing of problems. Doubt it will be an issue a year from now.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Scout211: Yeah, my husband is amazing. We can get along without a washer and dryer since we have never had a set before (!). (I visited a friend recently and her husband is somewhat amazed at our rural lifestyle, but what really floored him was the lack of a washer/dryer). I have taken the laundry to a wash/dry/fold place for years, but it burned down a month ago :-(. Now that we have moved onto the grid (we used to live REALLY rurally), and had a water softener installed (the water around here has a lot of iron in it, which wrecks washers), getting a set is doable.
Mary G
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You work at Home Depot, no? We only have Lowes here. HD only had one in stock, with glass, so not useful for privacy. I’m just replacing it for looks and noise control, so I’m not in a hurry.
Fair Economist
Spinning it as a “supply problem” is, I suspect, just another way to make Biden look bad. The backup in the LA ports is because imports are running well above the level of *any* time before in history. IOW, the problem is that the infrastructure can’t keep up with an unprecedented boom.
James E Powell
@Fair Economist:
I don’t actually see how that would make it a Biden problem, but I guess for some people, everything that pisses them off or inconveniences them in any way is a Biden problem.
sacrablue
@FelonyGovt: My current failing oven is gas. The new one that I’m trying to purchase will be induction/electric. It will be in a new location and require a new 240 line. I can’t do that until I can remove the old cabinets and I can’t even order the new ones. Just praying that the old gas oven hangs in until the supply chain improves. Also, we replaced our ancient sliding patio doors with new french doors yesterday along with the windows. The cats are terrified and are afraid to leave/enter the house. Fun times as one is also afraid of the litter box and must go outside!
JPL
Geez.. Now I have to start my holiday shopping. Call me Melania, but that f.k xmas.
NotMax
One thing there’s no shortage of is workers performing on demand shopping for orders slated for pickup-up or delivery.
Last time In was in the Target here, which has super wide aisles and even so it was gridlock like on a highway at the close of a three day holiday weekend. Can spot those people immediately as they’re in the uniform attire of Target employees and don’t use regular carts but those extended dolly thingies, and scan each item on a device before putting it on the platform.
@JoyceH
First time I ordered a new vehicle (1971 model) I did just that. When it showed up it had a sunroof, which I had not included in the order. Dealer tried to bully me into shelling out mucho extra moolah for that . Stuck to my guns (already had a signed contract, including VIN) and drove it off the lot for the originally agreed upon price.
At the end of July I ordered a new vehicle which can be tricked out as one sees fit (within the limits of options offered) at the time of registering the order online directly with the manufacturer — which is the only way this model can be ordered. Dealers, although the designated intermediary for delivery and payment, are not yet permitted to accept orders from a customer nor place any for on the lot stock for this particular model at all (yet), they make their cut by handling any financing.
Now, when my vehicle will be built and will arrive is still an open question. Fingers crossed for before the end of the year.
JPL
@NotMax: A son just did Target pick-up and he was really impressed with the service.
trollhattan
@Geminid:
Jeez, another triumph of Texas “independence.”
Twiddling my thumbs here on the left coast I admit to not really understanding the depth of the winter power failure disaster, perhaps because it’s not good teevee like wildfires and hurricanes. And to think we had a governor recalled because of Enron shenanigans causing rolling blackouts that would last an hour or three, while Abbott sits and thinks of new things to take away from his citizens with not a care in the world.
trollhattan
On the subject of extending the life of household items, we just had a couple of our ancient German (Henckel) kitchen knives professionally sharpened and holy hell, they’re like new! Now we need to have the rest done (mobile sharpening service that shows up at a local market monthly). I can’t seem to get them sharp myself, despite years of trying with various tools. Because dull knives are dangerous I was tempted by replacements, but not now.
dnfree
@Geminid: Sean Casten is also my representative. He’s one of the excellent Democrats from this area who took over from Republicans in 2018. He’s on my monthly contribution plan.
NotMax
@JPL
Between the handicapped spots and the expanded “For Pick-up only” areas we regular shoppers practically have to bring along provisions to make the trek from parking lot to store.
;)
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Sharp knives are indeed wonderful.
Lansky makes some nearly foolproof sharpening systems that work well. I’ve got one of their 5-stone kits in the basement somewhere that I need to dig out and use on several of our kitchen knives. It’s on The List!!
Cheers,
Scott.
way2blue
@NeenerNeener: Or packages of TP…
eclare
@NotMax: Awww, you respect the “Reserved for Pick-up” signs. At my Kroger, people do not. I schedule pickup early now. Aside from that issue, I’ve been impressed, even with produce. And as long as your order is over $35, the service is free.
Almost Retired
@dnfree: Wow, surprised that those suburbs were in a recently Republican district. I always though you had to get farther out of Chicago before you hit…..well…..Illinois.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: I’m pretty sure Lowes works the same way. One thing to keep in mind, even if it says on-line that something is in stock, let’s just say those numbers are approximate. When we get an order, even if it says we have -1 in stock, we still go out and check and we’ll often find that we have it. As often as not, it’ll say we have 10 and only have 5.
NotMax
@trollhattan
Have a relatively inexpensive (moreso when frequently on sale) knife and scissor sharpening thingie which does a decent job. Thing I like is the angle of sharpening gizmos it adjustable. Not up to snuff when compared with professional sharpening but has proven to be good enough for what it is.
Nowhere as wonderful as the one which disappeared during a move ages ago – two ceramic rods in a block of wood which could be adjusted by putting the non-fixed one into a choice of holes. IIRC it was sold by NASA at the time; haven’t seen one like it since.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: that’s interesting. The microchip shortage is a weirdly under-covered story in this era of saturation media
Geminid
@trollhattan: The little reading I did about the power outages described several factors, including windmills being impaired and natural gas generating plants and transmission pipes that were not well protected like those up north. And of course an electrical grid with insufficient connection to those of neighboring states.
I will be interested to see if Democrats can make this an effective issue in next year’s state elections. Republicans have been calling the shots in Texas for two decades now, so their politicians cannot credibly deny their responsibility for lax regulation. People going without power for days during a hard freeze is a “kitchen table” issue if there ever was one.
Texas is often characterized as an incorrigebly red state. But Biden lost Texas last year 48-52%. Looking at the matter one way, a four per cent margin seems like a lot. But looking at it another way, for every 26 Texans who voted for the churl, 24 voted for Biden. Republicans just cannot afford to lose many voters, and that freeze might may shake some loose. I hope Texas Democrats ram it down Republican politicians’ throats next year.
Geminid
@dnfree: Sean Casten and Lauren Underwood, Chicagoland’s contributions to the talented Democratic House Class of 2018!
sab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I took my ancient Bernina sewing machine in for repairs because it didn’t work. The guy shook his head sadly and said “It’s probably the motherboard needs replacing. That will really cost you.”
When I went to pick it up he was laughing: ” It’s so old it doesn’t have a motherboard. Just needed a new foot peddle.”
MomSense
@E.:
We are well into the journey, but we are at the point now where we see that it’s not a pleasant trip but we can’t turn back.
The fires in Greece and Turkey were devastating. My cousin was posting photos of one of the fires when it was only a few miles from her house. She lives just outside of Athens.
I don’t know what to do about all of this. I think we have to find our small support communities and cobble together our resources. The people who survive climate crises will be part of teams that have knowledge and local resources. They will be able to work together. We also desperately need arts. We need art, music, dance, poetry, books, and the expression that gives us moments of beauty and joy.
The privileged and uber wealthy will survive too, but fuckem.
sab
My stepdaughter used to do Uber and Lyft, but no more since pandemic. Now she does Door-dash and Grub-hub. Her income has really been clobbered because none of the restaurants are open before six. There used to be a big demand for afternoon deliveries. No restaurant around here even caters to the lunch crowd anymore.
Geminid
@Almost Retired: Suburbs are the big battleground now. Republicans lost 40 seats in 2018 and most had large suburban populations. Besides the two in Illinois won by Casten and Underwood, these included seats won by Luria, Wexton and Spanberger in Virginia, McBath in Georgia, Davids in Kansas, Fletcher and Allred in Texas, as well as several in southern California.
sab
@Scout211: My stepson started turning up to do laundry at our house. I wondered why, since he has been out of the house for years. Turns out the dryer died, and my husband wouldn’t let him dry his oily machine shop clothes without us washing them too.
Seems okay, but this was summer. What ever happened to the clothes lines of my youth?
Scout211
@sab:
HOA communities don’t allow clotheslines. They are much too unsightly, doncha know. ?
We moved out here to the wilds 13 years ago and the first thing I did after I set up my garden was to build and install a clothesline. My neighbor helped me cut the wood for the posts and supports and my husband helped me set the posts in concrete. It was a fun project and I learned a type of knot that I had never used before and I found some great line tighteners. I’ve used it ever since (except for towels) and that’s probably why my dryer lasted 2 years longer than my washer.
This summer, though, there have been several weeks that there was too much smoke in the air from the fires to be able to hang clothes on the line. That’s why a new dryer was a must.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@E.: an article in Slate today about ranchers killing off their livestock because the megadrought
I remember back in the 90s reading a long article about how dumb it is that our large livestock industry is so heavily concentrated in the arid West.
Kirk Spencer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I believe the water wars will return. Darnit.
J R in WV
@MagdaInBlack:
Our Mazda SUV went into my favorite body shop over a month ago. They have done everything but replace the front and read bumper covers, without which it looks very unfinished. No schedule for delivery, either. Really pissed off.
We have rental coverage for 30 days… I’ve been putting off getting a rental as we have another vehicle, but holy crap people!
J R in WV
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
We had a Viking stove, but the “stainless” burners were eaten up with holes, flames drifting around underneath. Couldn’t get replacement burners, was really fed up with poor quality on newly installed (by ME) burners.
Now we have a Thermador 48″ range, 6 burners, lots of computers. If the computers go, I will have two burners to work with I can light with a match. Scary.
I was told Thermador was founded by geeks laid off from the aerospace defense companies on the west coast, and I believe it. They should have hired a chef or two to help them imagine correctly. It is a good range, I shouldn’t be so negative, just grouchy today.
Another Scott
@J R in WV: My J wanted to rent a car while her old Corolla was in the shop getting a leaking brake line replaced. (They were short-staffed and it took over 3 weeks.) When she called a local place to see the rental rates she was told $660 a week for a compact.
!!!
Rental cars are another thing messed up by COVID-19 and the sharp depression. (Apparently lots of rental car places sold off their cars because nobody was traveling, then when the economy started moving again they didn’t have enough cars…)
We carpooled instead.
Good luck getting your buggy back together!
Cheers,
Scott.
JaneE
The last place I worked sourced most of our raw material offshore. Some years before I retired, so well over 2 decades ago, there was another bottleneck at the ports. We had stuff we were supposed to be processing last week still offshore waiting for a slot to unload. It was a mess, to say the least.
My company and our freight forwarders and the railroads that serve our plant all made changes to facilitate our shipments (steel slabs). It wasn’t overnight, but we got some dedicated berths with the proper cranes and equipment to handle our loads expeditiously. Rail cars got modified to make the loads safer to haul and easier to load. Net result, much better delivery times all around.
I have no doubt that businesses today are doing the same things. Trying to figure out how to get more stuff moved and loaded/unloaded faster and easier.
Until the pandemic is done all over the globe, don’t expect your stuff to be available like it was before. I had to postpone a meeting for two weeks. Now multiply that by the over 4 million people who came down with Covid-19 in the last 4 weeks. And will again and again until we manage to get this country under control, and every other country in the world as well.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: there is a good book about how the coming/already here changes in rainfall and rainfall patterns affects everything else- When the rivers run dry. Another one the touches on that and a lot more is With Speed and Violence, why scientists fear tipping points in climate change.
LeftCoastYankee
A big issue with shipping is the centralization of usable ports which can accommodate the largest (newer) container ships.
In theory the bulk of the loading/unloading labor is pushed back to the source (shipper or receiver), and this allows for more efficient processing at the Port.
The hidden problem is some ports are not import/export neutral, which requires additional movement of the containers. As that becomes more expensive, shipping companies only move them when necessary.
Point to point bulk shipping may become more affordable. It requires more labor, but has less dependencies on 3rd (4th? 5th?) parties.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Kirk Spencer: they’re already here-How Water shortages are brewing wars
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: there was a horrific article in the NYT a couple weeks ago about one of the largest rivers in Argentina that’s drying up
Found it. The Parana River, don’t know how to do the accent.
Scout211
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
On an Apple device, long hold your finger or cursor on the letter you are typing and different diacritical marks pop up, choose the mark with your cursor (or finger on touch screens).
Added: Paraná River.
Maybe others can give you tips on other devices.
different-church-lady
I refuse to react to this bullshit, even if it makes my life momentarily more difficult.
In June the specialty battery I needed to run my gear was $40 more than it had been. Today it’s $20 less than that, so for once in my life procrastination has paid off. (Six or seven shruggies here.)
In the end it has nothing to do with the condition of my soul.
(I’m drunk)
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@different-church-lady: What kind of vibrator do you use that requires such an expensive battery?
PIGL
@JoyceH: Maybe you should reconsider buying everything from Amazon if you ever plan to buy anything from anywhere else in the future. I understand the convenience of having stuff delivered to your door but you know there’s very few things I really have to have tomorrow. I make a point of buying things from neighbourhood shops because I want the neighbourhood shops to still be there next year. Amazon is just a terrible idea run amock.
PIGL
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
And here I thought you were a gentleman.
glc
@Kirk Spencer: Just saw the Rusch link.
Excellent.
Soprano2
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve told our staff that they are not expected to put up with abuse, and I mean it. We don’t tolerate behavior like that.
RuralDoc
@JoyceH: walmart.com has them available to ship. Yes, I know but it was the only place I could find them (I refuse Amazon out of principle).
RuralDoc
My hospital is low on Foley catheters. I know of another hospital out of diapers (seriously!) Supply chain is more important than any of us imagined.