Abstract
The last three years have been a challenge for many businesses and have emphasized the need for resilience. An important leaver to achieve resilience is inventory management. Having the right level of inventory has proven to be extremely difficult, especially for semiconductors with their long process lead-times and scarcity. Many companies have transitioned from just-in-time to just-in-case supply chains and from being faced with under-absorption due to lack of material to being faced with over-supply and over-stock situation when the demand eased up. The lack of an integrated view of customer demand and supply changes can lead to the bullwhip effect where uncertainty at every tier of supply can lead to inflated stock levels for each successive upstream tier. Consequently, the business implications of the fast development from undersupply to oversupply is widely seen in the quarterly reports for 2022Q3 and in the profit warnings for 2022Q4 where companies explained the reduced profits due to inventory reduction in the retail distribution. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the decision making during the pandemic, and what changes companies have implemented to achieve more resilient supply chains for semiconductors. Did the pendulum swing too extreme from just-in-time to just-in-case? This is answered by a literature review and an exploratory survey among Swedish manufacturing companies. The result is the identification of challenges for Swedish companies in achieving sustainable resilient supply chains instead of mitigating the disruptions.
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Bäckstrand, J., Malmstedt, A. (2023). Has the Pendulum Swinged Too Far from Just-in-Time to Just-in-Case in the Aftermaths of Covid-19?. In: Alfnes, E., Romsdal, A., Strandhagen, J.O., von Cieminski, G., Romero, D. (eds) Advances in Production Management Systems. Production Management Systems for Responsible Manufacturing, Service, and Logistics Futures. APMS 2023. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 691. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43670-3_7
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