Yup.
I have (had) over 20 years direct experience with this sort of thing. A lot of stuff is sub-assemblies, too. So, you source the subassy. from, oh, say, Philippines. “Not China” - yay! Probably can’t even get it made in USA any more, at 2x the cost. But the mfgr. of the subassembly sourced a small but unique forged metal part from China. Chinese supplier can’t deliver - now you gotta go back thru 2 layers of supply, get tooling made, get samples, redo some or all the QC stuff again, maybe even need to redo lifetime and reliability testing - there’s usually a hitch or 2 there: It’s a freaking headache and meanwhile you are losing customers / sales. Big operations can multi-source - may or may not help if half of China is shut down, smaller mfgr’s often can’t afford it just due to the overhead involved in doing so.
The “supply chain” is a misnomer - it is often more like a “supply root system”.
Wow, thanks. And it does bring up another issue for people to consider. Even IF companies develop workarounds to deal with their supply chains being disrupted, who says that quality won’t suffer? Particularly if they’re making substitutions with replacements that may just be a bit different than their standard parts.
So, at this point, if we see a big drop-off in product quality (of virtually everything)...we shouldn’t be surprised, given all the dislocation being caused by China.
Looks like the Washington Post is starting to figure out your “Supply Root System”
“Everything was supposed to be back to normal by now,” said Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council. “It’s not going to happen for a while. I think that’s starting to sink in.”
“Everything was supposed to be back to normal by now,” BASED ON WHAT??? A perfect example of Normalcy Bias.