When automotive suppliers define their procurement
strategy and enter into contracts with their
semiconductor suppliers, they should place particular
emphasis on supply reliability and a high level of flexibility in the supply chain. This helps to avoid
coordination problems in capacity planning later on.
With standard components it is possible - and usual
practice - to qualify several suppliers for a single
component. For customized products (Application
Specific Integrated Circuits, ASICs), however, there is
often only a single supplier (Single Source Strategy)
used because of the high qualification effort. In the
future, a better balanced trade-off is necessary between
costs for another supplier and potential supply risks.