For months we have been listening to what unfortunately looks like a broken record from the manufacturers and professionals: “we will not be able to return to normal production as long as there is a semiconductor crisis “. The skyrocketing demand for components has overwhelmed the chip supply funnel, and so the big auto manufacturers were forced to cut their assembly and delivery forecasts. With a consequent increase in management costs, as stopped factories are obviously a waste of resources.
According to Jean-Marc Chery, managing director of STMicroelectronics, will have to hold out for at least two more years. According to reports from the newspaper La Stampa, the number one of the electronics giant placed the definitive exit from the crisis in the year 2023. He is not the first to say this, but his point of view must be strongly taken into consideration.
“The situation is extremely complex. And I think it can be said that even in 2022 the production capacity will not be up to the demand. Let’s take the automotive sector. Even beyond electrification, the segment will demand more electronics. In addition, we too are seeing a shortage of the most varied materials. And then there is the logistical question, which has many problems. Normal will not return until 2023. The challenge is complicated. Market dynamics will need to be monitored every month. Some customers, for example, are already placing orders for 2023. But it is too early to say exactly when it will end. Our industry until the outbreak of the pandemic was organized very efficiently if we consider that it incurs very high costs for investments and research and development: STM spends around 15% of revenues, but most of the microchips reach the customer for less than a dollar. . The boom in demand has shown that the model of integrated producers like us is more flexible than others, so much so that our revenues have grown by 23%. In other words, we were able to put a greater capacity on the track quickly. Well, if we want to talk about nodes, producing microchips is a process that requires a lot of programmingChery said.
We need a kind of ‘revolution’ in terms of production capacity. And it’s not easy: “The semiconductor industry plants work seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 360 days a year, to amortize the costs of multi-million euro machines. So increasing the capacity quickly isn’t easy. In the medium, you can buy new machines if you have the equipped space in which to insert them. This is what we have done and will do to cope with the boom in demand. But building an environment to produce microchips from scratch takes years“.
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