Shortage of microprocessors: many factories must slow down their production

The shortage of microprocessors continues.Absorbed by greater products of greater necessity while the confinement and telework measures multiply around the world, there are almost no longer to follow the rise in the automotive factories which are thus stopped net in their momentum.

Microprocessors are vital elements in very many objects of our daily life and each car today emerging from production lines has many of them, whether in the multimedia system, driving aids or lighting.But they are also for other products, such as 5G mobile phones, laptops, televisions or even video game consoles, which experienced a very strong demand in 2020 during the various confinements around the world and moreParticularly at the end of the year when approaching the end of years.With automobile sales which have parallel vigorously on the rise, especially in China, we have been witnessing since Christmas a real shortage of these famous chips that worsen from week to week.

The first brands to suffer were those of the Volkswagen group, Audi, Seat and Skoda in mind, which had to reduce by almost a third the pace of its factories, followed by Ford.Then it was the turn of Subaru last week which announced to reduce its production of "several thousand" its production this month in its Gunma sites in Japan, where the activity was stopped for two days fromFriday, and in Indiana, in the United States, with measures that could be maintained until February.

On the side of Nissan, it is the production of the hybrid note in the Japanese factory of Oppama which must be slowed down while Honda announced that its British factory firm its doors today until Thursday, the shortage ofMicroprocessors adding here to the currently rampant epidemic of COVID-19 across the Channel.

Then Volkswagen reduced the sail a little more by communicating a new production reduction a few days ago in its main Wolfsburg factory where, after those of the Golf, the workers working on the Tiguan, Touran and Seat Tarracco channelswill also see their shortened working days.Same story with Audi where 10,000 employees will be partial unemployed in its Neckarsulm and Ingolstadt sites with production partially stopped from this week until the end of the month.

And it is now Daimler's turn to reduce production in no less than two factories, including that of Bremen could even lower the curtain for a few days in early February.