Taking Too Long to Get Your Stuff?

If you haven’t experienced a delay in getting a package or shipment lately then you’re in a better place than most. For the rest of us the delays have become the normal and adjusting to the new normal takes time and unfortunately some pain. As global supply chains have become ever more reliant on just in time inventory, any type of delay can be catastrophic and very expensive. There’s a lot that goes into getting a container filled overseas and processed through the US ports and transportation system to end up at a final destination. So once you throw a monkey wrench into the main gears of this process, or in this case a pandemic flu, you can throw all sense of normal out the window.

The current logistic bottlenecks aren’t supposed to end anytime soon and unfortunately there are no great solutions in sight. Over the past several months someone walking the beach in LA could see over 40 ships with 100,000+ containers anchored off the coast of California at any given time. There’s just nowhere for them to go. US ports are already not as efficient and productive as their Asian counterparts. Asian ports work 24/7, or 168 hours a week, compared with only 16 hours a day, or only 112 hours a week at the LA port. Terminals used by the truckers are open 168 hours a week in Asia, but only 88 hours at LA. So if you can’t get containers off the ships in the US, than you can’t get containers back to Asia to be re-filled. Future forecasting of these imbalances and increased demand put on the system is going to make periodic disruption and delays the new normal that everyone will have to accept and plan to.

So like most businesses lately your probably having some internal conversations about what impact re-shoring could have on your business. We have been looking at a multitude of solutions for our customers and helping them work through their supply chain issues to decide on what components and services make sense to have done closer to home. We encourage any conversation to see what strategy is right for your business model and what the impact could have both near term and long term. We have domestic machining capabilities coupled with sub assembly and inspection services to better assist our customers in their re-shoring efforts. And if its just the short term where this makes the most sense (if the old normal becomes the new normal again), then we have a global sourcing division to help your team better navigate the global supply chain. We’re here to help you.