General Motors has announced that it will be closing a light-truck manufacturing plant for want of Japanese parts that the recent catastrophe (time to name earthquakes, guys!) has made unavailable. In retrospect, it seems idiotic to depend exclusively for the supply of any single part on factories located in lively seismic zones.

An average vehicle has about 20,000 parts and depends on thousands of suppliers, and the sudden loss of any one could be enough to stop production, Mr. Hoffecker said.

“It’s a real scramble for everybody,” he said. “It could be a chemical plant that got hurt that supplies material to make plastic that goes into a door panel that goes to someone.”

For parts that are shipped by boat to North America, shortages could take about a month to materialize. But for lightweight, high-value parts like microchips that travel by plane, problems could crop up much faster.

G.M. declined to identify the parts in short supply at Shreveport or their manufacturer. A person with direct knowledge of the situation said just one part was involved and it was also used in other G.M. models built elsewhere in North America. G.M. is diverting parts that would have gone to Shreveport so it can continue building models that are more important or in shorter supply, said this person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and so spoke anonymously.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 8:00 pm.