Japanese auto chipmaker Renesas expects to resume full production next month following fab blaze

Japanese chipmaker Renesas has said it will restore full production capacity at its N3 Naka plant by the middle of next month following a blaze in March that destroyed equipment and contaminated the clean room. Renesas, which accounts for a third of all automotive semiconductor sales globally, said it expects to be at half- …

[Anonymous Coward]

This is out of control

I don't know about the automotive industry, but as a weekend warrior hobbyist this has to stop.

Lead times on ATtiny(ANY tiny SOIC/DIP/etc...) is 5 months. Arduino Nano's have gone from $1usd (Aliexpress prices) to nearly $3.50 (it's cheaper to buy D1 ESP's!). I thought I'd get around all this by choosing SOIC but on the parts I want there (ATSAMD51G19A-MUT) the lead times are 53 weeks !!! WTF?!?

It's a rrrrrrrrrrrrreal bad time to be a tinker/STEM/wtfe enthusiast! I've never seen it like this, it's jungle'ish.

[steamnut]

A bit late?

The piece says that Renesas are installing a "new fire suppression equipment to prevent any future fires.". With the revenue importance of these lines you would have thought that they would be always evaluating and upgrading their fire suppression systems. Mind you, from recent events (SBG2 data centre in Strasbourg), it seems that data centres are no better....

Surely, the insurance companies ought to be asking their clients to check their fire systems too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A bit late?

In this realm, the exact opposite of always evaluating and upgrading is preferred.

Anything fire related comes with enormous paperwork and checks. Then there's the unique power of the God of Buildings fire Marshal, which nobody typically thinks about until the entire building is shut down due to erroneous alerts to the Fire Department. Development and deployment of fire system software/hardware isn't just as simple as sending a "memo" to the manager who sends it to another manager who sends it to... A lot of fire systems are running older designs due to the fact that it's basically all or nothing because changing/upgrading any 1 component individually will almost certainly cause a cascading failure.

[Pascal Monett]

"overreliance on just-in-time supply chains"

Ah, the beancounter's dream. No, we don't have stock, we're JIT !

I hope you like all those economies you've made on not storing. Now, you even economise on revenue !

[Timbo]

JIT ?

One can understand using JIT systems for large components that the auto industry needs such as chassis and bodywork panels...as these are large and difficult to store.

But small silicon chipsets, even if mounted on pcbs are hardly going to take up a lot of room and I doubt they will break the bank either.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: JIT ?

So you stockpile raw chips and discover that the next shortage is connectors, or PCBs or the one factory that makes the clear lacquer for PCBs.

So you either do JIT or you stockpile entire sub-assemblies.