In Japan, production lines will be suspended and production targets will be reduced from 900,000 to 500,000 vehicles in September.
We all know it, we have all experienced it in one way or another, beyond its health effects, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed our habits. And so have the habits of companies. Between the disorganization of supply chains, production difficulties and very irregular consumption, many sectors are struggling to keep up and one of the most affected is undoubtedly the semiconductor industry. One of the most affected sectors is undoubtedly the semiconductor industry, which is facing the same upheavals as the others, but there is no question of orders being at half-mast: on the contrary, demand has never been so strong and production cannot keep up.
If you've tried to upgrade your PC and, at a guess, change your graphics card, or if you're a PlayStation 5 / Xbox Series X|S enthusiast, you've seen how hard it is to get certain components. But the problem goes much deeper than that and even affects huge players like Toyota, the world's largest car manufacturer. Thanks to their stocks and their priority status in the eyes of suppliers, companies of Toyota's size were not affected first, but now they are no longer spared, as Le Figaro explains, citing the Japanese daily Nikkei.
Toyota had initially planned to produce some 900,000 vehicles in the whole month of September 2021. These forecasts have been revised downwards in recent days, with only 500,000 vehicles according to Nikkei. A reduction of around 40% in production will be achieved by temporarily suspending several lines in the group's Japanese factories from the beginning of the month. In North America, China and Europe, it would only be a question of production cuts, but without more precision.
While Toyota published - at the beginning of August - strong year-on-year results for the first quarter of 2021 / 2022, the group refused to raise its annual forecasts, saying that " The situation is still unpredictable due to the expansion of Covid-19 in emerging countries, the shortage of semiconductors and the surge in raw material prices ". He seems to have been rather well advised, even if for the moment he refused to confirm the information reported by Nikkei.
