It hit the car manufacturers first and hard but then spread to other parts of industry during the worldwide pandemic. The shortages became so sharp that manufacturers were taking them out of other products for their own. I’m talking, of course, about semiconductors and the supply chain problems of the last few years.
Chips are now a commodity, to be found in the humblest of items we use every day. That we take them for granted became clear only when we missed them. Now the shortages have eased, but what will the supply chain disruption mean for the electronics industry in the future? In our cover story, Chris Edwards looks at what happened, why, whether it could have been avoided, and what’s happening now. Is it the end of offshoring?.
Where there’s a shortage of almost anything, there’s a black market. And where there’s a black market there are counterfeits. We often hear about counterfeit clothing or accessories but not so much about components...
