Choke Points in Electronics Supply Chains?

madax asks: "Well..yeah..I am doing some graduate level research in identifying choke points in the electronics supply chain, trying to identify critical materials used in the electronics industry, critical processes owned by maybe a select few players and potential information distortion mechanisms that could be used by a few select players in the supply chain to disrupt the entire industry. Can anyone help me by pointing to interesting examples from your experience?"

Comments

Start with the Raw Materials

[Anonymous Coward]

Big earthquake in Kobe several years ago affected shipments of semiconductor molding compound out of nearby Osaka. This causes big problems for many semiconductor manufacturers as most of the world gets their compounds from here.
A couple of years back during the telecom boom (ahh those were the days...) Beryillium Copper Alloy used in semiconductor leadframes became a really scarce commodity.
Loudspeaker prices can fluctuate wildly depending on the supply of cobalt and other rare-earths used in making magnets. The key supply points are volatile African nations where revolution affects production.
Follow the raw materials!

Re:Memory.

[reinard]

Although you're right, I think the original poster was referring to the incident a year or two back where a rather serious earthquake in Taiwan took out one of the factorys that produce the wafers which are used to make most kinds of memory chips. If I remember right there are very, very few factorys that produce them... you can probably count them on one hand. But I don't think it really caused an actual shortage in ram chips, the market always over-reacts and prices fluctuate wildly (in this case they went up significatnly for 5 or 6 months, until the factory was repaired).