How A Single Missing Part Can Hold Up $5 Million Machines And Unleash Industrial Hell

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Nicole Wolter at work at her factory in Wauconda, Ill., which makes components for industrial machines. Wolter’s company is straining to meet demand as her own suppliers struggle with short staffing.

Courtesy of HM Manufacturing

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Courtesy of HM Manufacturing

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Timing belt pulleys produced by Wolter’s HM Manufacturing are used by a wide variety of industries. However, she’s having difficulties getting the parts she herself needs to produce her own goods.

Courtesy of HM Manufacturing

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Around 5,000 unfinished cars remain parked on May 14 outside the Volkswagen Navarra factory in Pamplona, Spain, due to lack of semiconductor supply. Manufacturers all over the world have been struggling to meet surging demand.

Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Images

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Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Images

Around 5,000 unfinished cars remain parked on May 14 outside the Volkswagen Navarra factory in Pamplona, Spain, due to lack of semiconductor supply. Manufacturers all over the world have been struggling to meet surging demand.

Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Images

Congested shipping lines are also creating havoc

Finding parts is one challenge. Actually getting them to the factory is another. Record volumes of freight are overloading the transportation system, leaving key supplies stuck on trucks, trains, and cargo ships.

At the busy Port of Los Angeles, container ships are now waiting more than a week to unload.

Gene Seroka, the port’s executive director, acknowledged that when a container filled with critical parts is delayed, there’s a multiplier effect, holding up deliveries of other products throughout the supply chain.

«We’re working as if it’s a triage situation,» Seroka says. «We’re asking these companies to give us a list of their containers in priority fashion. We’re working directly with the terminal operator and shipping lines to rush that product through and get it out to those manufacturing facilities.»

There’s little sign that supply shortages and delivery delays will ease any time soon. So for now, factories are having to improvise.

Wolter has tried to find or manufacture alternatives for missing parts. She’s added to her own workforce and purchased her first robot.

Still, products she used to deliver in five weeks now routinely take nearly twice that long. Her competitors are just as slow or slower, though. And the orders keep coming in.

«It’s a circus,» Wolter says, with a rueful laugh. » And I’d like to get off this ride.»