Are you having supply chain or other COVID-19-related problems?

In June the Biden administration announced the formation of the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to “provide a whole-of-government response to address near-term supply chain challenges to the economic recovery.”

The task force comes after the White House released a report on supply chain issues that focuses on four products: semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging; large capacity batteries, like those for electric vehicles; critical minerals and materials; and pharmaceuticals and advanced pharmaceutical ingredients.

“While amplified by the public health and economic crisis, decades of underinvestment and public policy choices led to fragile supply chains across a range of sectors and products,” said a June 8 fact sheet from the White House.

Here at News & Tech we would like to know if you’ve experienced any supply chain issues or other production or personnel problems due to COVID-19. Let us know at editors@newsandtech.com.

DCOS Sweden CEO Mattias Andersson recently responded to a query from us on the matter. The company’s specialty is “innovative automation for printing houses,” says the company. Below are his answers.

What supply chain issues are you experiencing, if any?

Being a provider of automation solutions, we see longer lead times on more or less all our purchase components.

What are the causes of the issues?

We experienced the same situation after the finance crisis in 2008. Many vendors scale down production capacity greatly in time of crisis and simply struggle to scale up when demand increases. Markets get nervous and start ordering more than the actual demand and it becomes a bad circle.

What are the results of the issues?

Longer lead times. We have been fortunate to stay very busy through the pandemic, which has resulted in slightly longer lead times anyway, so it has not affected us much.

Are you seeing improvement on the issues? If not, when do you see it turning around?

I think it will take a long time until we are in a stable situation again, probably more than a year.

What have you done to combat the issues?

Working with our customers to carefully plan and forecast their needs and be smart in planning our purchasing.

Anything more to add?

In general our industry seems to do better and better; we see it in more projects and more requests. This is very positive.

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