Since the quake in Japan my employer has not felt any purchasing disruptions for technology products. Instead what we are seeing is that the price of the product is slowly rising. On any given week we will order roughly 10 new laptops to replace aging laptops within the organization. All of our products are Dell, which in fact many parts are made in Japan. This has caused a rise in price for the laptops and now we are starting to see a longer lead time before we receive product. I found this article interesting since Yes IT supplies have not been disrupted, but the article fails to mention that the end user will be paying more. I have also noticed that it is now taking longer to receive replacement products for damaged laptops. In the past if a motherboard fails I would have a replacement product within two days delivered to me. Yesterday, I placed an order for a replacement board and I was quoted a lead time of one week.
If a person wants a product they can still buy it, but it will cost them more. Japan's quake did not stop the flow of products to the end user, but now companies are scrambling to find other suppliers of parts in order to fulfill their customers needs. Different suppliers will be more than willing to manufacture parts for anyone, but there will be a higher cost associated with the part.
Short term I don't foresee Japan's quake causing to many problems with IT related products, but long term be ready to pay the extra money since many of these products are now being made elsewhere.
I am surprised that other competitors are not taking advantage of the situation by offering lower cost options in order to gain market share. Have you been approached by another company with such offers? Are there competitors that are not sourcing from Japan that can fill the void of fast order fulfillment?
ReplyDeleteMike, even warrantied systems are taking that long to receive replacement parts? When I was at Ripon College we leased Dells and typical leadtime on replacements was a day-sometimes we'd receive parts on the day of our call. If so, it's pretty amazing to see the trickle down effect of the earthquake whether it's through service or on the price tag.
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