Supply Chain Flaw article

[Illini]

I read this article

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,5806342.story

on the flaws in the supply chain for electronics makers exposed by the Japanese earthquake.

One pundit was quoted as saying, "There should have been fail-safe measures taken, if one [plant] goes offline it doesn't throw your whole production schedule off," said Kenneth Grossberg, a business professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "How could you make yourself so vulnerable?"

No one took the leap, though, and said that this applies to food, heating fuel, gasoline, and all our other just-in-time supply chains in this global economy.

I guess chip manufacturers are more important than suppliers of more mundane goods? Still, the article illustrated the dangers to all of us in this new world from that butterfly a continent away.

[seedspreader]

There is.

All those automotive plants are ISO 16949 compliant and are supposed to have emergency action plans that cover them in an event that would cause the plant to shut down.

The problem is radioactivity.

Radioactivity gets on people and parts.

That pundit should do a little better research, most facilities are going to have their back up plant/co-manufacturer within a hundred miles of them (freight in and out for the manufacturers supply chain). In this instance, even those plants can be affected.

I am actually surprised at how well the whole thing has fared up until this point. I did hear that Toyota was going to lay off 25K US workers though to focus on their rebuilding efforts.

http://www.ksat.com/news/27427068/detail.html

Perhaps the other manufactures should adopt the ISO model???