Fascinating thread about the current supply chain + labor market conundrum that’s squeezing many manufacturers. TL;DR: It’s not the lack of workers, it’s that JIT manufacturing culture that makes recovering from disruption nigh impossible.
IIRC it was Dell that really popularized the JIT manufacturing philosophy, back in the days when computers were purchased like cars — you hoped someone had the configuration you wanted in stock.
This was also the era when the best way to get a deal on a Mac was waiting for Apple to announce a new model… then waiting 6 months for them to auction off a huge pile of the old model at cut rates.
Today, computers from the manufacturer are likely to be assembled, to spec based on your order vs pulled from a warehouse. I can understand why that shift was earth-shaking in a high-cost-per-item industry; getting stuck with a pile of old Performa 400s was cripplingly expensive.
But now that it’s spread everywhere, and specialization means that few manufacturers have the ability to produce their product without a constant stream of inputs from other manufacturers, welp… It’s a Systems Problem Nightmare.