It can take into account predicted difficulties. The pandemic was difficult to predict, basically everyone predicted incorrectly, and chip supply is functionally inelastic over the short term.
They figured that would've been enough to survive another incident of similar scale.
So they had no problem with car inventory for a half a year longer than every other automaker, until their additional buffer of chips also ran out.
Hindsight in 20/20, just imagine the automotive OEMs would have gotten rid of the JIT for chips and Covid (and all the other things causing the shortages) wouldn't have affected chips but, say, certain raw materials like Aluminium.
Or run a fab. Fabless isn't a God-given right. Vertical integration is a thing.
Vertical integration got a bad reputation because financial engineering dipshits like Carl Icahn would come in and strip mine your company for the single super profitable division and destroy the rest (see: Mesta Machinery).
TI doesn't care about that 50 cent part that's holding up your ability to produce a car. They're going to run every chip first whose profit per chip is higher than yours.
On the other hand, your own managers will have lots of incentive to produce that 50 cent chip if it is in the way of several thousand dollars of profit from selling a new vehicle.
200/150mm wafer at 180/150nm node fabs are not that expensive to run and maintain. But they have annual capex and MBA types don't like that.
In addition, that fab probably won't compete well in the general market so it's effectively a captive fab. However, you'll have internal managers complaining that they have to use the internal chip which is more expensive than the one from TSMC because their bonus depends upon getting 5% cost savings next quarter and who the hell cares about keeping our fab filled so it's around when everything goes pear-shaped--that's somebody else's problem after I've been promoted and gone.
Which works, until your supplier is simply willing to go bankrupt. And you still have no chips and can't ship anything.
> most have to compete on cost, and there every cent counts.
Until you can't ship and everything grinds to a halt. Risk reduction has a cost and nobody is willing to pay it because it doesn't enter the balance sheet.
Because of those extremely hostile contract terms, the carmakers could just turn around and go "oh yeah, all that stock we said we'd order this year, you can make it if you like but we're not going to take deliveries or pay for it" which is what set this whole pile of bullshit in motion. At that point, their suppliers were holding and/or producing lots of stock for them, but got informed they would not be getting paid for it, had to cut their losses, and this ended up disrupting manufacturing for months as lines had to be reconfigured mid-batch and a lot of product got scrapped. While this was happening, the automotive fuckers changed their minds and requested more, meaning the suppliers had to scramble to produce with now limited resources because the scrapped stuff was still clogging the pipeline, so resources got redirected away from every other part.
In short, religious JIT could only have this kind of impact here because the automotive companies are absolute shits to their suppliers and could force them to jump one way and then the other, causing disruption upstream which then spread downstream to everyone using electronics. This is a purely artificial crisis caused by the car manufacturers and is not an inevitable consequence of either the pandemic or the logistics disruption. Air cargo is barely affected and semiconductors and their precursors (except for water) are light and easily transportable by air, and certainly valuable enough that this does not impact their cost. This is a problem that would not have existed without the automotive industry, covid or no covid. They brought this upon themselves, and now everyone else is suffering (and auto execs go on TV and blame work-from-home and remote education for the shortage, which is just adding insult to injury). Screw them.
Seriously, I don't know what kind of axe you have to grind with automotive and JIT. It does seem to be a larger issue if it is affecting all industries, and all companies. Chip shortages are affecting Aerospace, Google reportedly has issues getting chips as well for things like the Pixel 4a.
Also I am not sure if you have hands on experience with SCM or procurement, automotive or otherwise.
And yes, I happen to have hands on experience with procurement and sourcing. I've been redesigning customer projects around missing parts all year. Every industry is affected, but it's automotive which started it, and caused suppliers so much damage. This is what suppliers tell me and I have no reason to distrust them. My axe to grind is that I'm now dealing with the fallout.
That us in SCM and logistics, incl. procurement, have tendency to push issues down to lower tiers is true. it is also true that logistics and transportation is offloading a lot on public infrastructure. Does it have to be that way? On the one hand, yes. Roads are public, railway lines more often that not as well (to an extent that is). That's what taxes are there for, because indirectly everyone if profiting from a running economy. Again, that is less the case in developing countries and should change. I also agree, and that is maybe even more important when it come to the environment at large, SCM should prioritize environmental and climate protection more, along with social standards. That won't happen so until it is financially beneficial to do so. This is a general issue with capitalism running rampant so. Chemical plants giving a shit about worker health and safety or the environment is as old as chemical manufacturing., just as an example.