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Westcon-Comstor supply chain impact statement

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Updated 6 July 2021

Material shortages across the semiconductor industry are impacting global supply chains and slowing output across multiple industries, from automotive to consumer electronics and beyond.

As a result, some of our vendors are experiencing component supply delays, which are causing extended lead times on a concentrated sub-set of their products. This could potentially affect your orders with us.

We have identified impacted vendors and products, and we are working in close partnership with these vendors to minimise the impacts of the production delays on our partners. Where possible, we have invested in (significantly) increased inventory levels to provide channel resilience.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate this industry-wide challenge, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and further complicated by the global transport capacity issues and European logistics challenges.

If you have any questions, please contact your Westcon-Comstor representative.

FAQs

What is happening in the semiconductor industry?
The semiconductor industry is openly reporting supply constraints that are resulting in extended lead times on a very wide range of technologies, including hardware products in the networking, communications, data centre and security categories in which we specialise.

What is the impact to Westcon-Comstor’s supply chain?
Our supply chain is experiencing extended lead times on some vendors’ product families with a dependency on the affected semiconductor components, which is in turn delaying our delivery schedules for the impacted products.

Are these impacts being felt across the entire Westcon-Comstor portfolio?
The impacts are concentrated in specific vendors and product families, but as the situation is constantly changing, we recommend you check the status of your particular requirements with your Westcon-Comstor representative.

What is Westcon-Comstor doing to mitigate the impacts and resolve the situation?
We are in regular contact with our vendor partners and can assure you that they and we are doing everything we can to offset the effects of the current situation. These actions include:

  • Working daily with all impacted vendors, monitoring all constrained products, and enhancing our inventory safety stock levels based on lead-time extensions.
  • Liaising with our global transport partners to improve transit times, expedite shipments and secure critical air freight capacity. Our logistics teams will receive alerts of constrained products/inventory to expedite processing through our logistics centres and make product available.
  • Continuous review of the supply chain to provide visibility of ongoing product availability and delivery performance, monitoring lead-times for constrained products and reviewing potential product substitutions.
  • We also continue to review the use of refurbished hardware under the terms of our vendor partners’ circular technology and recycling programmes which may afford opportunities for reduced lead times for certain equipment types. Please ask your Westcon-Comstor representative for details of these programmes.
  • Open and transparent communication of these impacts with our customers.

How is COVID-19 contributing to current supply chain challenges?
Please see our COVID-19 statement.