Update on global semiconductor shortage

You might have read some news during the last year about the semiconductor crisis on how manufacturers are struggling to get chips for producing cars and laptops and how this is affecting the whole electronics industry. You might also have noticed lately that some vendors have products out of stock or are increasing prices. Today we will try to explain it with an example from our daily life.

Imagine you would like to cook pasta with carbonara sauce, but you could not go to the shop and take it home: you have to order 6 months in advance. The supplier you like doesn’t have much money because with the number of competitors offering the same, he can’t increase the price much. So he decides to keep the price low, but only start producing once he has received an order. You really like carbonara pasta, so you decide to order both items and wait patiently.

4 months later they call you that you can pick up the pasta (wow they got it earlier!). But only the pasta and not yet the sauce, that sauce will arrive soon. You tell them that you prefer to wait until they receive both to save on trips to the shop.

The 6 months pass and you call them to get latest status. “The sauce is about to arrive”, they tell you.

Finally, after a 7 month wait, they call you that the sauce already arrived, but that they sold the pasta to another guy that wanted to pay a bit more than you (that guy really wanted the pasta!). You need to wait for another month until the next pasta that the other guy ordered arrives and they can give it to you. This time you learned the lesson and you take the sauce, store it, and wait until the pasta is back in stock. Finally, the pasta arrives and after 8 months you can enjoy your carbonara pasta.

Instead of pasta with carbonara sauce, this is what is happening with electronic boards with thousands of subcomponents, in addition to a really long chain of companies from the raw material until the end user.

And this is one of our every day jobs at ArduSimple, trying to make your dreams come true: have all our items in stock, so you can order your carbonara pasta today and get it delivered in 2-4 days.