Title: Recent Shortages in the Semiconductor Industry | Source Today
Headings: Recent Shortages in the Semiconductor Industry
Recent Shortages in the Semiconductor Industry
How the Automotive Chip Shortage Became a Global Semiconductor Crunch
Enacting Long-Term Solutions

Content: Leading pure-play foundries reacted to the trend by focusing their production lines on fabricating commercial and consumer electronics products. In addition to this, a shortage for certain raw materials like silicon wafers and ABF substrates placed a further squeeze on semiconductor production capacity. As the crisis worsened, government leaders asked chipmakers and foundries to adjust their output to support the ailing auto industry. TSMC and other leading contract IC manufacturers agreed to help and shuffled the production lines to alleviate the component crunch. Unfortunately, the unplanned adjustment disrupted the global supply chain, causing pricing fluctuations, shortages and delayed availability for many non-vehicle ICs worldwide. Enacting Long-Term Solutions
Admittedly, the long-term effects of COVID-19’s impact on the semiconductor sector and demand in various end-markets were unforeseeable. But the flaws of a system dependent on a few regionally centralized part fabricators have been clear for years now. The U.S.-China trade war demonstrated the global supply chain’s vulnerability to disruption from breakdowns in international relations. Its weakness became more apparent last year when many component factories temporarily went dormant and multiple billion-dollar industries ground to a halt. The current supply scarcity is the product of unmanaged systemic deficiencies that have developed over time.