Chip Shortages

[Easto]

Wow,

Both GM and Ford are going to be shutting down production for 2 weeks due to the shortage. I guess I really don't understand this issue. I would have thought that ramping up chip production would be quite easy. And... even if you can't get an ocean container to move on-time, you could surely airfreight tons of these things in order to avert any shutdown.

Easto

[Philip]

Yep... The way I understand the problem is that they can't ramp up capacity easily. It takes a lot of time and money to add capacity (a year?) and there is recurring cost, so if demands slows your cost doesn't scale down. This is why they don't like to have much excess production capacity. With the current shortage, any new/US factories are a year+ away, and there may not be enough qualified people for the necessary jobs either. Bottom line it will take a while.

I don't really understand why Micron (MU) stock is lagging considering all the demand, and the fact they're one of three DRAM manufacturers in the World.

[Easto]

I watched an informative video today that tried to explain part of the problem. But, not matter what they said I still couldn't get over the reasons it's taking so long. Part of what they said was that when the virus hit they thought there would be a slowdown so they tapered back on chip production but with all the people at home needing chips for computers and everything else electronic that they were buying why they sat at home drained the supply. And the manufacturers don't want to ramp up in case there's another dip. But the thing is that there wasn't a dip, consumers still need more.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah ordering servers/workstations/laptops/network gear....getting frustrating. We're spreading our orders across quite a few different disties, when one gets some stock...it's often gone in hours. Prices fluctuating wildly!