AUTOMAKER’S SUPPLY CHAIN FRAGILITY: CASE STUDY OF GLOBAL CRASH OF PA-12

Abstract

The stop of production in an automaker due to lack of parts is highly undesirable and its financial impacts are huge. Many reasons may contribute to parts shortage in assembly line, such as: fails in the production schedule of the automobile industry or its suppliers, delays in transport just-in-time, reception of defective parts lots, strikes, etc.

Anticipating a potential failure to provide with sufficient time to act, it is desirable?No doubt, because it would allow in most cases the creation of a logistic action plan in order to eliminate or to minimize its possible impacts. However, when the situation is the rupture by lack of productive capacity of a specific raw material used by almost all automakers around the world, which has been the case with PA-12 in first years of this decade, actions must go beyond of logistic solutions. This kind of situation implies engineering strategies to develop and validate technical solutions of alternative materials in a very restricted time. PA-12 is used in several parts, such as fuel systems (pipes and tank) and brake, clutch or blow-by pipes, for example.This article goal is to present, through a case study in an automaker, the strategies adopted by the engineering team to replace the use of raw material PA-12 wherever it was possible to ensure its using when it was strictly necessary.