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Yup - just in time manufacturing means we often rely on critical parts delivered from foreign countries. I wish I could remember the article I read over five y
by EricE 6y ago
Yup - just in time manufacturing means we often rely on critical parts delivered from foreign countries. I wish I could remember the article I read over five years ago that was pointing out that many utilities do not have backup equipment at larger substations and often rely on replacement devices from overseas sources.
Hopefully we have gotten a bit better and stockpile spares for critical infrastructure such as the electrical grid, especially when we have lost so much of our internal manufacturing capabilities.
- 5040 6y agoOf some relevance here: Transformers that are small are often on hand and easy to swap out. But some of the bigger ones have months long lead times. The facility we were at had transformers that had a 6 month lead time from Germany to replace them and they had to be sent via boat as they wouldn’t fit in planes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318278