In the last week the automaker Ford He had to slow down the production of his Ranger pickup. The reason was the global shortage crisis semiconductorswhich “keeps hitting,” as they admitted clarion sources close to the US subsidiary.
There have been no official communications from Ford on the matter, but sources close to the automaker have ensured that the General Pacheco factory “lost some production units for the problem of supplying parts using semiconductors”.
So, in the same week that Nissan and Renault had to stop production of their pick up trucks in Córdoba due to government import restrictions, Ford also saw its production checkedin this case for a Global problem generated by the pandemic.
Semiconductors or “microchips” are computer supplies whose manufacture is highly concentrated in the world and are crucial in industries such as the automotive industry, since each car takes an average of 1,400 tokens.
The shortage of these components, the supply of which was not a problem before the pandemic, was due both to the general crisis of the logistics occurred at the end of the pandemic (price of containers multiplied by three) as well as the fire in one of the few chip factories in the world, the Japanese Renesas electronicsin March of last year.
In Argentina, the impact of that crisis had been marginalcompared to lack of dollars which has generated growing restrictions on imports by the Central bank. At least, until last week.
“The semiconductor problem was getting better but in November it struck again. At Ford, they estimate that in December they will be able to recover the lost production, but with this problem it is difficult to make predictions,” added the industry sources.
Indeed, even the semiconductor crisis has crept in the suspension of activities for almost a week What did the pickup assembly line have? Nissan and Renaultlocated at the latter automaker’s plant in the Santa Isabel neighborhood of Cordoba.
“After a few consecutive days of technical stop due to the lack of semiconductors and other componentswe have rectified this situation and will resume normal operation of our production line next Monday November 14,” Nissan said in a statement released on Friday.
The truth is that in the case of Nissan and Renault, the chips would have been one of the reasons for the suspension, e not even the principal. “Restrictions on imports and the lack of dollars are the underlying problem, both in retreats in Córdoba and in other suspensions which took place in Fiat and in the manufacturers of agricultural machineryauto parts industry sources said.
The modification of the authorization system for non-automatic imports (ex-SIMI are now processed through a new Import system or SIRAwhich debuted on October 17th) added bureaucratic noise to the hurdles, which until then were almost exclusively financial. Companies have stopped asking for authorization from the Central Bank to bet on the new Secretary of Commerce, Matias Tomboliniwhich is responsible for the authorization of the SIRA.
That bureaucracy and the root cause, lack of dollars, was the exclusive theme during the recent congress of the Argentine Industrial Union, in Parque Norte.
From the Chamber of Machine Tools and Technologies (CARMAHE), where most of its members are small and medium-sized enterprises, issued a tough statement on the matter.
“We do not know if we arrive in December, we are analyzing early holidays for staff because we are running out of stock or have stopped machines because they won’t let us carry a spare,” the statement read.
The vice president of CARMAHE, Florencia Vitale, added: “We have to ask permission every day to be able to work, it’s traumatic, we live by looking at my cell phone to see if they have accepted my SIRA or notto see if today I can continue with my business or not”.
Source: Clarin
