The supply chain logjam is hitting spares and parts now

 

Two recent posts caught my eye.  First, Ricochet reports on a behind-the-scenes crisis.

We have all seen the empty shelves for randomly illogical items, starting with toilet paper and now cat food.

With a very small engineering firm, there is a larger supply chain crisis that will be coming to a head in three to six months. We can’t get parts. I could go off on tangents, but let’s focus on just one major device. A PLC, or programmable logic controller, is a computer that runs actual stuff. Not things like a washer and dryer but how about the water that comes into your house, the water that leaves, the drawbridge that needs to go up, the MRI you desperately need. Almost everything you touch that is manmade uses one of these controllers at some point in the process.

To fulfill orders, my competition and I have been looking for other sources and substituting wherever we can. This is from sketchy suppliers to used parts on eBay. Now these people jacked the price up tenfold, and they are running out. New bids, which are mostly municipal, are getting a huge surcharge because we have no idea what something is going to cost or even if we can fulfill it. Many parts now have a six-month lead time. That means we won’t deliver, but we will be glad to take your money.

My medical controls experience is limited to a heart catheter surgical kit. It isn’t much, but I can’t change a fuse on the machine without a trail of paperwork, and don’t even try substituting anything. Major production companies will start slowing or shutting down because they are unable to get spare parts.

In the wastewater industry, most communities have 20-year-old equipment and older. That’s like 105 human years. Should one piece of this system fail, they may find replacement parts are just not available. When this happens, all you’ll hear on the news is there was a water main break. Here is an insider secret. It is almost never a water main break. It’s usually someone like me who hit the wrong key.

Other machines and systems are not so dramatic. But the problems are starting to add up and will soon hurt you in ways you will never know.

There's more at the link.

As if to confirm that Ricochet report, Matt Parlmer tweets (click either image for a larger view):

Again, I saw this coming a long way off.  (Experience in the Third World sure helps when it comes to current First World trends!)  Among other things, I've been ordering likely-to-need spare parts along with tools and equipment I buy.  Recent examples include:

• A Presto 6-quart pressure cooker, for which I ordered spare seals and overpressure plugs;
• A Dyna-Glo kerosene heater, for which I ordered a couple of spare wicks;
• I also stocked up on a few recoil springs for my more frequently used firearms, to replace the existing ones as they wear out.

There's nothing quite so useless (or irritating!) as a valuable piece of equipment that's sitting useless, gathering dust, because you can't get spare parts or consumables for it.  Rather buy them when you buy the tool.  That way you're protected against temporary shortages or supply chain logjams.

To illustrate, remember I mentioned some months ago that several small businesses in my area are spending thousands of dollars to recondition older vehicles, because they can't buy replacements due to current market constraints?  So many people are doing that now that some spare parts to rebuild engines, and some spare engines themselves, have become almost impossible to find.  A local workshop told me last week that they'd been able to locate a total of precisely three new GM 5.3L EcoTec3 L83 engines available at retail anywhere in the USA.  None of the dealers that have them are willing to sell them to anyone else at any price, because they know their own customers will need them.  The boss pointed to a rank of a couple of dozen pickups and work trucks parked to one side of his workshop, and told me that every one of them is immobilized, waiting for parts, and he has no idea whether or when those parts will arrive.  Apparently agricultural machinery like tractors or tillers have even worse parts shortages - not good news when planting season is coming up in a month or two.

I'm rather glad I have enough oil and air filters put away, and enough engine oil, to do three oil changes apiece on our vehicles when the time comes.  I have a feeling it may be hard to get those filters before long.  We also have one vehicle due for a major service soon, so we'll try to get that done ASAP, while the necessary parts for it are still available.

Peter