JIT
Do you think anybody will learn from this? Or are companies going to continue to use just in time manufacturing business as usual?
The Thai floods have dampened Goldman Sachs outlook for global PC sales forcing it to downgrade forecasts for this quarter and next. The devastation to the disk drive industry, particularly WD and Toshiba, is starting to feed through into the supply chain with PC vendors already confirming price rises and warning of shortages …
...based on my lunch with one major storage system vendor yesterday; they said it's already 90 days and it's just getting longer and longer - apparently everybody is trying to order even more than usual (to build their stock) which in turn pushes shipping dates even further back.
It's pretty scary out there and no end in sight (=regular shipping times) before next Spring.
I, for one, hope that this teaches a lesson or two to system builders, storage system vendors etc about maintaining their own 90 days worth of 'cushioning" for periods like this...
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"I, for one, hope that this teaches a lesson or two to system builders, storage system vendors etc about maintaining their own 90 days worth of 'cushioning" for periods like this..."
If you factor in the total 90-day depreciation of the value of stock on hand and extend that over the lifespan of the companies, holding stock for 90 days would have cost them more than the current crisis will.
In other words, if you can save $10/drive by waiting 90 days to buy it JIT and you move a million drives, that's 10 million dollars you didn't have as a cost. That's also not including the interest you could save/earn (depending on your books) by keeping that cash on hand instead of tied up in stock.
Wait, what?
"In other words, if you can save $10/drive by waiting 90 days to buy it JIT and you move a million drives, that's 10 million dollars you didn't have as a cost. That's also not including the interest you could save/earn (depending on your books) by keeping that cash on hand instead of tied up in stock."
So FYI even $1M-$2M Netapp or EMC systems can come as little as ~150 drives plus SSDs - let's make it 200 pcs total, OK? And let's lower the price to like $500k-$1M, OK?
So your awesome business advice says let's save $1500 on $500k-$1M and up systems and risk not being able to sell anything due to a shortage of drives?
If so then you have one weird logic, Sir - I hope you are not running a business...
To sum it up shortly: by NOT having drives ready and NOT selling aforementioned storage systems with one million drives due to lack of drives will inflict HUNDREDS OF TIMES BIGGER LOSSES IN REVENUES hence it's a stupid argument, I think.