Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IMLUnpredictability is increasingly becoming the new political norm. This poses enormous risks for the market and the economy. In times like these, companies of all industries must be particularly well prepared for crises, according to researchers at Fraunhofer IML. While tariffs, disasters, and wars are driving the next crisis forward, technological innovations continue to evolve. Researchers offer recommendations on how companies can prepare themselves.
It is quiet in the production hall – deafeningly quiet, you might say. Every minute that no car rolls off the assembly line, no employee assembles parts, no sheet metal is welded, costs money. And all because of a few components, small components – just a few nanometers in size. The chip crisis is sending shockwaves through the automotive industry: Reuters reported back in March 2021 that VW was unable to produce around 100,000 vehicles due to the chip shortage. As Springer Professional noted at the beginning of January 2022, all car manufacturers have had to repeatedly halt production since the beginning of 2021 due to the semiconductor scarcity. An estimate available at the time from Springer Professional assumed that automobile manufacturers would be unable to produce vehicles worth 210 billion US dollars due to the chip shortage.
This decline is also affecting automotive suppliers, who are left with unsold parts, while other industries such as the game console industry are also reeling. At the time, geopolitical tensions between the US and China and the resulting tariffs that set the crisis in motion played their part as well. The companies affected agree: no one could have foreseen the extent of the crisis.
