The ongoing shortage of electronic components is causing a serious gap between demand and supply of industrial computing products. This is driving big price increases and extremely long lead times for semiconductor components. The semiconductor shortage is now impacting industrial computer companies, with projects delayed months and months. What’s worse, nobody can forecast when it will recover.
The causes of the current IC shortage are varied: fires, floods, market factors, and reduction of manufacturing facilities due to COVID-19 to name a few. There are also shortages of shipping containers and air freight capacity to deliver goods around the world.
The specific issues disrupting supply of computer boards are mainly due to these key components:
- audio chips,
- CPUs,
- memory,
- storage, and
- ethernet chips.
The situation has impacted component cost and deliveries, leaving many manufacturers to deal with longer lead times, higher costs and delayed projects. This situation will not last forever, of course, but companies all over the world are being forced to rethink how their projects can be completed.
At the moment, the individual cost of IC chips has increased by anywhere from 40 percent to 1000 percent. This is driving purchasing departments to desperation. In addition, delivery times of these components are very long, with lead times quoted anywhere from 4 weeks to 12 months. Hence production lines with inadequate inventory, for example some computer motherboards, are seeing lead times as long as 6 months or even more. With this shortage, manufacturers must have a creative and positive strategy, to stabilise lead times and prices as much as possible.
What can we do about it?
At CyberVisuell, our factories are taking positive steps to buffer the impact of the shortages on our customers. Our strategy is to prioritise stocking of key components in our factories’ own inventory. We aim to keep inventory to cover 85%-90% of all hot selling Industrial PC, Industrial LCD and Panel PC lines. This strategy can only be successful with careful planning and management, and the support from our supply chain. We are also working with our partners and key customers to provide forecasts and schedules so that we can ensure their project supply with minimal delays.
There is no easy way out of this situation. But with our careful inventory and planning strategies, CyberVisuell are doing everything we can to support our customers’ needs. Maintaining stability and flexibility is one of our core company values. A good manufacturer must not only focus on product quality, but also on stable supply, competitive prices, and complete technical support. We continue to do everything we can to reduce the impact of the shortages and support you, our customers as fully as possible.
Contact us today to take advantage of shorter lead times and competitive prices on CyberVisuell Panel PC’s, Fanless Box PC’s and LCD Monitors.
