Production closures across Europe will have an untold longer-term impact on car manufacturers

As Nissan Sunderland has just announced it is to extend its production suspension throughout April, Slimane Allab, EMEA General Manager at LLamasoft, a global AI and logistics solutions provider that works with manufacturing clients operating facilities across the continent, made the following comment :

“Just as Chinese manufacturers begin to come back online; their European counterparts are being forced to shutter factories, for an extended period of time. This unprecedented action to close production across Europe will have an untold longer-term impact on car manufacturers.

With car production almost completely halted across the continent, supply chains are at breaking point. As factories lay idle those companies which can rapidly switch production back to China are set to be least impacted.

The Coronavirus impact on the auto industry as a whole is significant. It acts as a reminder to factor risk and resiliency into designing the supply networks. Companies should strongly consider robust contingency planning with secondary and backup sources of supply on different continents, to assure a flow of critical components when there is a unforeseen impact on a source country.”