Question Chinese manufacturing

[maddogmcgee]

I was reading this article and it got me wondering what level Chinese CPU's have gotten to? Obviously claiming that they are at 14nm doesn't mean their manufacturing facilities are capable of making a Rocket Lake chip but it at least made me wonder if they might catch up in a decade or two. They certainly have the market size and capital required. And the willingness to buy/steal a lot of industrial information.

'They're dying to get better chips': Why the US is trying to squeeze China out of the advanced microchip game

By tightening controls on China's developing advanced microchip industry, the US might be pushing allies to work against its interests, as both countries spend vast amounts of money chasing technological supremacy.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Tech Junky]

That's been a problem all year for anyone who has suppliers in China.

I tend to aim for anything outside of CN proper and haven't had troo many issues. Even some vendors I've dealt with before are having issues with some items.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I tend to aim for anything outside of CN proper and haven't had troo many issues. Even some vendors I've dealt with before are having issues with some items.

But what happens if your supplier has a sub-supplier in China? It can be a problem. It will be years before people can iron out the supplychain problems caused by China's lockdowns. The problem is surmountable, though.

 

[Doug S]

But what happens if your supplier has a sub-supplier in China? It can be a problem. It will be years before people can iron out the supplychain problems caused by China's lockdowns. The problem is surmountable, though.

Mostly the response has been to maintain higher inventory levels than before, because that's all you can really control. There simply isn't a way to know, let alone control, who all your supplier's subcontractors are, and sub-sub contractors, etc.

Everyone had become so focused on just in time manufacturing to drive down inventory costs. The success of that strategy was based on a lot of assumptions that covid proved were untrue. Now we have further uncertainty with the recent US trade moves against China. The only intelligent response for an operations manager is to maintain higher inventory levels, and seek multiple suppliers, even though both of those result in increased production cost.