Jamie Lansdell, Regional Director of North America in our Automotive and Mobility vertical, discusses the impacts, responses, and realizations of the automotive industry as it finds its way through an incredibly challenging time as the world is engrossed with strain on capacity and an overwhelming demand for semiconductor chips.
Chris Parker (Host): Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Expeditors podcast where you can hear about front of mind topics in the logistics and freight forwarding industry through the lens of a global logistics provider. I'm your host, Chris Parker, and today is all about the global chip shortage and its impact on the automobility industry. We'll take a look at the shifts in consumer behavior pressure on suppliers, manufacturers, and customers. And we'll also discuss how auto manufacturers have responded and the role logistics partners and freight forwarders play in all of this. And to walk us through the whole entire topic today is the regional manager of Automotive and Mobility Vertical in North America. Jamie Lansdell. Jamie, welcome to the podcast.
Jamie Lansdell: Thank you so much. A pleasure to be here.
Chris Parker: Jamie, you are in Detroit, but pardon me for being so forward, you don't sound like you're from Detroit.
Jamie Lansdell: No, I certainly don't have a Detroit accent, but I'm originally from the UK, but through a great career working in high-tech technology, I've been in various locations around the world and find myself at the throbbing heart of the automotive industry based in Detroit. I've been here for about two years.
Chris Parker: How did you get involved in logistics and freight and then ultimately into automotive?
Jamie Lansdell: Absolutely. So, I started my career back in the UK in automotive as a grassroots engineer and worked my way up through the ranks, through design, development, understanding the requirements of how factories are built, how commodities of built. And then throughout my career, I've been working in various sub-segments. Not only automotive where I started. I moved and had as a [conman 00:01:49] into aviation, high tech, cutting edge parts of the defense industry. And that's taken me into, I've lived in Paris, I've lived in Dubai, I've lived in various places all over the world. So, quite a wonderful yellow brick road around the world to bring me here, to working in freight forwarding and working with Expeditors and the great team we have here. And be based in Detroit.
Chris Parker: Yeah, absolutely. And so what would you say your responsibilities are as regional manager in North America?
Jamie Lansdell: So, for us within the Vertical team, what we do is we have around 55 to 60 OEM key customers. We have 550 or 600 or so tier-one customers. And we're the glue that is the bond between industry and the requirements and the idiosyncrasies of what's needed within the industry. And then how we can be that glue between that and the freight forwarding industry and how we can take and translate the requirements of our customers and put that into language that is understood within the freight forwarding community and bring those two worlds together. So, we're almost just absorbing all of the volatility that's going on in the world, all of the craziness that is out there at the moment, and bringing that in and helping shepherd our customers through some difficult time, shall we say.
Chris Parker: It's almost like you're an ambassador in some ways for automotive.
Jamie Lansdell: I'll take that. I think that's a great analogy. Yes. An ambassador of automotive. That definitely works.
Chris Parker: Well. And then something that I love asking is why do you care about the automotive industry? Why do you care about what you do? What makes your job special to you?
Jamie Lansdell: And that's the key. Coming from and being on the customer side, living that world, living that pain within automotive, understanding the requirements, the quality aspects, the cost, the delivery and the amount of pressure into launching a vehicle on time with the right dynamics and making that factory run as smoothly as possible. And really understanding that the cost of, as soon as you stop an assembly line for a vehicle manufacturer, it could be between $16,000 and $20,000 per minute of that track being stopped.
Jamie Lansdell: And once you understand that and you bring the knowledge into the freight forwarding world and into what we're doing and how we're supporting that, taking that knowledge at your heart, and then using that as passion and fire and fuel to help make sure that you're dynamically planning, and we're ahead of the curve. Not only from a customer services point of view, but adding technology into that, visibility of freight, really making sure that we are preparing our customers and ensuring those track line stops do not happen. So, it's great coming from one side of the business and then coming into almost into our world and bringing those two worlds together and combining them.
Chris Parker: Yeah, I couldn't help, but notice too, that your hair is a little bit on fire. How's everything been for you lately? What's the last couple of months been like?
Jamie Lansdell: I mean, anyone who's been working in automotive throughout the last 18 months, it has been a turbulent time. It has been a series of volatility events, one after another. Shutdowns, lockdowns, reopening of plants, a transition that we've seen within facilities from just in time to just in case. How do we have more inventory? How do we manage more inventory? How do we manage the costs of that? Adding into that more and more events of I'm sure you've seen the Suez canal blockage. I'm sure there's been news recently of more and more events within the shipping world of congestion, of delays of whatever it may be. So, it's really been difficult to keep abreast of everything that's going on and support our customers through there. So, we're working long days, long hours. We're there on the phone with customers helping support all of the things that are going on in the world.
Jamie Lansdell: So, it's just a very challenging time, but also as well as it's really, it's for us as ambassadors to the automotive world, it's really a good way for us to really ensure that we're putting our arms around our customers and leading them through these volatile times and coming out the other side. And I don't think it's all doom and gloom. I think a lot of the worst is now behind us and we can really just start to focus on where are we for the end of 2021. What does the next year bring? And hopefully some slightly less volatile times in the near future.
Chris Parker: Yeah, absolutely. And I think a source of these volatile times has been today's topic, which is the chip shortage. So, to kick it off right now, starting from the very beginning of all of this. What would you say is commonly seen as the cause of the chip shortage? What are people attributing this to?
Jamie Lansdell: Simply my view is COVID-19. It's as simple an answer as when we went into lockdown last year, we all effectively, immediately all had to work from home. We've all been using video conferencing tools like we're using today. A lot of people upgraded their home TV systems, their mobile phones, there's a rollout of 5G technology at the moment. So, next-generation chipsets are going on. The entire world is consuming more and more chips. And really, COVID-19 has been a catalyst. It's helped to speed some of this up. So, really the first thing to, I'm not going to say to blame this on, but the first event that really started to add volatility within the semiconductor world was COVID-19 and the craziness of the last 18 months as it were.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think of when I went to work from home, I ended up getting myself my new keyboard, a new mouse, an led light, a whole new setup, and everything like that. And then when you take those little additions, those little purchases, and then put that at scale, that's a lot of new demand from various suppliers. It's frightening to think about just how that demand has soared.
Jamie Lansdell: I mean, if you think about IoT, the internet of things, of the number of microchips that are being added into areas that would never have microchips before. Our refrigerators now have microchips in. Simple speakers are now smart speakers that have microchips in. And the same thing from an automotive perspective is 20 years ago there were maybe one or two microchips or ECUs within a car. These days there are many, many more. The brake by wire, electric steering systems, air conditioning systems, the entertainment systems all have more and more chips. And the demand for chips has been getting, certainly from an automotive perspective, has been ramping up steadily year over year, over year, over year. And really COVID-19 just suddenly put an extra demand onto the system that simply the semiconductor world just couldn't deal with. And then we'll talk a little bit more about procurements a little bit later, but there have been some mentality shifts that have had to happen because of this and how this has affected automotive manufacturers moving forward.
Chris Parker: Let's talk about the effects then. So, for automotive specifically, what situation have they found themselves in to date?
Jamie Lansdell: Well, it's been such a profound knock-on effect. So, we talk about not only these microchips going into cars, but they also go into the factories into a lot of the systems that are controlling the flow of materials through factories. So, we've seen a huge amount of issues with that inbound supply. And as soon as that starts to dry out, a lot of the OEMs have had a lot of issues of, well, what cars do we make? Do we try to build cars where we have fewer microchips in? So, therefore we can reduce the demand and the consumption of the microchips that we have left. Is that something, so we've seen a shift of cars of built to order rather than built to stock? So, you see a simplification almost of car manufacture. And I think that was helping to sort of to ease the strain on the system.
Jamie Lansdell: But simply, the supply chain is still continuing to dry up from a chip manufacturer's point of view. So, what we've seen now is cars actually being made, but without the chips being put into place. So, certainly around Detroit at the moment, there's a lot of carparks around the big three OEMs filled with vehicles. They look finished, they look like they're ready to drive, but they have no semiconductors or chips installed into them. So, they're just there as fully finished vehicles, but they can't be sold to the end customer without these chips in place. And the news is full of not only within Detroit, but within Kentucky, within Illinois, there are lots of the OEMs around the US at the moment, building and building and building, but unfortunately with no semiconductors, we, as the consumer, can't drive the car away. And that's hurting a lot of the customers that are around there at the moment.
Chris Parker: Now, forgive me if I ask a potentially stupid question here, but why keep producing cars if they can't have chips in them? I mean, I understand production stoppage is going to be a very damaging thing or can hurt a plant, but if they can't sell the cars or get them off the lots and stuff, why keep producing them?
Jamie Lansdell: Well, the thinking is, this is only a reasonably short-term disruption. The supply chain within the semiconductors will catch up and there will be a flow of semiconductors coming back in later into the year. Then you can retrofit. Go into those vehicles, install the microchips, install the right PCBs, install the right LRUs, line-replaceable units. Then will go in and plugin, the vehicle goes through testing, gets driven away. So, at some point, we're going to see these vehicles being driven off the lots and being sold as per usual. The problem for the OEMs for the car manufacturers is you're paying for the overheads of a factory. You're paying for overheads of all the parts that you already have in place. You have the labor aligned. You actually have the demands. All of us at the moment, there's been a surge in car demand, because a lot of us can't fly at the moment.
Jamie Lansdell: So, everyone is replacing their current vehicle and trying to get a new car. So, there's a customer demand out there at the moment as well. So, they're trying to satisfy that demand in a way where it's hand to mouth, where they can keep on building. And then as this demand continues, we can just slowly but surely start to get more and more vehicles out to the public. I think if they were to stop, not only would they have to bear the cost of all of that material, all of that overhead and labor. Because they still have to keep their stuff. They still have to pay all of that money. But then when the chip starts supplying again, then it will take them longer to get the cars out and to the customer. So, you have to go through the build process and so on. So, it's more of an alignment process as it were.
Chris Parker: Interesting. So, okay. So, the understanding overall is that this is a short-term thing. We can afford to kind of hold these in-store for now, retrofit them later, and then kind of keep things going along afterward.
Jamie Lansdell: It's really interesting. I mean, the view is when this happened, the car manufacturers are only a small percentage of chips that are made around the world. And it's really around 3% of chips that are made globally go into vehicles. So, really, the automotive is only a small context of what we talked about earlier. The chips that go into our cell phones or go into 5G technology. They go into our refrigerators, into our TVs. The volume is much higher for those types of commodities than it is for a car as it were. So, you're seeing a lot of political pressure being put onto the chip manufacturers from the centers of gravity, from Germany, from the US, from the UK to try to get chips into the car manufacturers, to try to get more and more of these cars off the lines and out into the customer's hands.
Jamie Lansdell: So, it's really becoming a bit of a political battle to get more and more chips into the automotive world. So, it's hopefully, we're going to start to see more and more of these chips coming through or being prioritized for the automotive industry. But I think that's really going to have an effect on how long this semiconductor shortage goes on for. We within the industry think potentially it could go on to the end of the year, but who knows, with that political pressure, who knows as to what will happen around the world.
Chris Parker: Right, right. Yeah. There's really no telling.
Jamie Lansdell: There's not. I mean, within the US, it was also a bit of a perfect storm as well. I'm not sure if you remember, there was a snowmageddon down in Texas earlier on in the year. And so within the US, I think we're 12% of global chip manufactured here in the US. So, when we're consuming more chips than we're manufacturing here. So, in the same way is what we're seeing within this is governments like the US putting in more infrastructure, more development costs into how can we make more chips here. Have a reliance on actually producing chips within the US for the US automotive and technology market, rather than bringing them in from Taiwan or from North Asia, as it were. So, lots of changes happening in the near future, I think, in the semiconductor world.
Chris Parker: In the meantime though, aside from continuing production of vehicles and then storing them, how else have auto manufacturers been able to respond to the shortage? What else are they doing as they find themselves in this weird position between the supply and the demand of their customers?
Jamie Lansdell: It's amazing how different OEMs have different views of how they will view the chip shortage. Toyota is a good example. So, back, maybe 10 years ago now, and that was a Fukushima incident. So, there was the tsunami that happened within Japan. And Toyota went through a process where they evaluated their reliance on semiconductors at that time. They went through and reviewed, what are the inherent risks? What can we do to mitigate those risks? And what can we do to make sure we've got more resilience and supply chain planning? And so what they've done is they were more prepared, shall we say, for this eventuality. So, we're seeing the likes of Toyota slowing down production, slightly being a little bit more cautious in what they're doing, but really they've been one of the only manufacturers who've continued to produce and continue to have fewer effects on this.
Jamie Lansdell: Some other OEMs haven't quite been so lucky or other OEMs have more of a reliance on technology. I'm sure as you know, as the mobility world changes, as there's more of a focus away from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles, these battery electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles have even more semiconductors within them. So, in that same way, they're getting disrupted more. So, they're producing less vehicles and they probably also have more demand. So, we're seeing a real shift in balance across the industry, depending on where you are, depending on the type of vehicle you're manufacturing and depending on what the customers need as well. And it's also just a quick and interesting point is COVID-19 actually was a bit of a shift in us from a customer's point of view. Throughout the years, I'm sure you know, that SUV's became one of the most popular vehicles.
Jamie Lansdell: And there was a shift to SUVs, sedans were second and pickup trucks were third. Well, actually our consumer behaviors also changed after COVID. COVID has now put pickup trucks and those utilitarian vehicles into second place and sedan vehicles are now in third. So, actually we, as consumers, are also behaving slightly differently these days into what we're buying and how we're buying. So, from a volume point of view, making a utilitarian pickup that has less chips and actually is helping the OEMs focus on these subsets and get more of those vehicles out to market. So, it's interesting how it's such a perfect storm at the moment of everyone fighting each other and really just the OEMs trying to preempt what people want and how they can manage the small amount of chips that they have with a massive amount of demand they have at the moment.
Chris Parker: I can't tell you how seen I feel right now. Because my wife and I have talked about selling one of our cars and considering a pickup truck when that was like the last vehicle that we considered getting. But now all of a sudden you're telling me that the demand overall for trucks has gone up a whole other place. That's incredible. Yeah.
Jamie Lansdell: Yeah. I mean, my personal view on this is it's more a case as well of safety. I think the bigger the vehicle is... I'm sure you know when, if you drive an SUV, that you feel a little bit safer around the big road haulage trucks that are around the world. If you've got a smaller sedan, people don't feel quite so safe. So, I think with a truck there's a lot more of this. And also in the same way, you then, you want to go and pick up your new refrigerator with a microchip in it. You can throw it in the back of your pickup truck, rather than your sedan. So, everyone's a winner here.
Chris Parker: Now, one thing that you brought up is, there's a good point with EV market or with electric vehicles and such. They're an industry that's trying to grow and there's a lot of interest in them, but they've essentially been stalled because of their reliance on chips. What have they been able to do that you know of to kind of bounce back from this to kind of survive this, because this sounds particularly trying for them?
Jamie Lansdell: Absolutely. So, between now and 2030, there will be, there's a huge surge within mobility. And this is focusing on battery electric vehicles. We call it ACES technology. So, Autonomous vehicles, Connected vehicles, Electrified or Shared. And certain sub-segments of this actually have been helped by COVID. So, autonomous vehicles and driverless vehicles are taking the driver out of the loop. There's been a surge within this, with us all not wanting contact with delivery drivers or for the, how we share or socially distant as it were through these COVID times. So, the demand has been going through the roof for these types of commodities, but unfortunately they, in the same way, are feeling the same pain of, well, we want to manufacture and we want to get our product to market, but the chips aren't available, certainly for us as a lower pecking order from an automotive volume point of view. Is this more difficult to get them out and get these products to market?
Jamie Lansdell: So, we've seen a lot of these OEMs just continue a testing phase throughout 2021. And really just some of the ambitious production targets that were set up for early 2022. We're seeing those move to the right slightly because of this volatility. And it is all of our hope that they can soon get more of these chips and then get these products out to market and satisfy this demand. Because as soon as the chips become available, as soon as the products go out, we as consumers are going to understand the efficiency of autonomous vehicles delivering our pizza or delivering our post or whatever it may be, which is going to make everyone's life a lot easier. It's going to drive efficiencies within multiple industries, whether it's e-commerce, whether it is final mile delivery, whether it is just our own commute of how we're using our vehicles. We want to get this through. Because between now and 2030, we're looking at a $6.7 trillion industry from an automotive perspective.
Jamie Lansdell: So, growth of 30%. And it's at a time in history where the change from internal combustion to battery is really, this is going to be one of the most profound changes we all have or see within our lifetime of how we can really move technology forward, how we interact with our cars differently, how perhaps we can be driving and the car just takes over the driving and we use it as a mobile workspace. We'll pull out our laptop or a tablet and get some work done as we get driven to work or to our next appointment. So, this future isn't far away, but we need the chip manufacturers to get on board and really ramp up their production plans to try to satisfy this demand in the marketplace.
Chris Parker: I mean, it makes me think of Johnny Cab from that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Total Recall. I don't know if you saw that movie at all.
Jamie Lansdell: Right. That's exactly. I mean, I hope they don't do the Total Recall and have the fake taxi driver there in the cars, but yeah, I'm with you.
Chris Parker: Okay. So, we spend enough time talking about the OEM side, the auto manufacturer side of this. Let's focus now on logistics and freight forwarding partners. What kind of pressure have we been seeing? What's been needed of us to respond to this?
Jamie Lansdell: Well, it's a great question because at the moment, clearly we know that air travel is limited due to the COVID constraints. So, the options from an air freight perspective are limited. From an ocean freight perspective, in the same way. A lot of freight that is coming from the Taiwan market or North Asia market flowing into the USA, primarily are coming in through two ports. Through LA and Long Beach. And of which the congestion within the ocean freight market is massive at the moment. So, there are a huge supply chain constraints as to what options are available to us, what air freight options can we do? What can we do from an ocean point of view, how do we find capacity? So, we've been, I think I mentioned earlier, how we shepherd our customers, how we support our customers through these volatile times.
Jamie Lansdell: And we've found solutions where we are hand-carrying and we're doing critical air shipments to find capacity, to bring these components into North America and make sure that we're hand to mouth from production in Taiwan, into the OEMs within the US. And I think this is going to continue certainly, probably until the end of the year, until we really see air freight continue to open up, that will hopefully alleviate some of the pressure on to ocean freight. But in the same way, it's all about communication and visibility. Our customers have more and more of a need for updates of where are we with, where is this shipment that left Taiwan on this date? Where is our freight? And we've been adding in transponders, our Cargo Signal service offering that shows in real-time visibility all the time of where the freight is. Pinging on a map that's showing you exactly where that is and exactly what the ETA will be.
Jamie Lansdell: And that technology is really helping our customers understand the updates. So, when do we need to make sure we've got people to upgrade these vehicles. These vehicles are off the road. How do we make sure our labor is resourced to fit these into these latest batch of vehicles that need to be sold to our customers? So, that visibility is already helping our customers with understanding the risks with the ETAs. But yes, it's certainly a challenging time within the marketplace at the moment. I thank goodness for some of our fantastic service offerings and technology that's allowing us to exceed our customer's expectations.
Chris Parker: You brought up retrofitting vehicles earlier. And I think from a logistics perspective, how do you go about doing that? I mean, would we have to move the cars back to the manufacturer to then get them retrofitted? Or does someone make a site visit and then start retrofitting the cars that way? What does that process look like? And how complicated is that?
Jamie Lansdell: Well, it's actually very complicated, because what the car has actually missed its final inspection, it has to go through its final road testing. It has to go through a series of verification techniques before it is sold on. And clearly, because a lot of these are off-site at the moment, the OEMs have to play that balance of which vehicles do we use? Which were the first that were manufactured? Which have been out in the parking lots for the longest period? And how do we batch these through? But from a freight forwarding point of view, we work with our customers, for them to plan which way they're going to do it, and how many chips are going to be arriving. And then how that's going to transfer into a certain amount of vehicles that need to be retrofitted for them, a final inspection, final road test, and then final delivery.
Jamie Lansdell: So, that obviously is one aspect of it. But really the complexity is coming into the latter part of this year, where we're going to see a surge of all of these vehicles starting to get chips at a certain time. So, there's going to be a surge of finished vehicles that need to be moved by via ocean, via air, via road transportation and of which there's, those three areas are at high capacity at the moment.
Jamie Lansdell: So, finding capacity to move those vehicles, to surge those vehicles, to satisfy customer demand. This is a challenge that we really see coming later into the year and really preparing our customers for this of, we know there's going to be a deluge of finished vehicle logistics coming up and in the last part of this year. Let's get prepared. How do we do this? How do we use that same visibility technology for the final mile delivery of finished vehicles and use that same technology to make sure that the dealerships know this is where the vehicle is, and it's on its way. So, many challenges as this starts to open up again. So, it's going to be a very busy end to this year.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Good luck. Hopefully, you have enough hair to continue feeding that fire. What kind of supply chain questions have been raised? I'm thinking of procurement, I'm thinking of storage. I'm thinking of like the just in time to just in case. What's all changed there. What questions are being raised and asked of us?
Jamie Lansdell: I mean, again, a great question, because one of the things that we're really just, as we build our relationships with our customers, as we come through the other side of this, we always want to learn lessons. We always want to look at a system and build resilience into a supply chain. How do you make improvements? How do you make sure that you prevent what attacked these things from happening again? How do you ensure that you're mitigating the risk? And so we're working heavily with our customers on this what-if analysis of what went wrong, what did we do and how do we improve it? And one of the things that we've seen is procurement behavior is changing or needs to change within the automotive industry as technology and the vehicles become more technologically advanced. That means that the more products that we're going to be procuring are more advanced, which means the supply chains are completely different for how you would manufacture, let's say, an engine versus how you would manufacture battery cells, control systems, or some of the more advanced sensor suites that go on to these electric vehicles.
Jamie Lansdell: So, that procurement behavior sort of is quite new to a historical industry, where they've never had to buy these parts before. They've never had to procure. And actually, this is really some of the root cause of what happened within COVID. When we shut down all the plants back in February last year, and the plants closed, what then happened is they stopped all purchase orders into these high-tech advanced industries and of which they just continued. They continue to manufacture for other people. The automotive is only that small percentage. So, it didn't matter to them. But because the procurement behavior hadn't changed or there wasn't that understanding of what is required within these technological fields. And that behavioral change is something that we're really seeing within the automotive industry. And that there's more of a, there needs to be an understanding of how the supply chains work and how we need to behave and interact with these technologies differently moving forward.
Chris Parker: And I imagine what the continued demand for chips in other devices and other appliances and things, for the automotive industry to kind of jump out of line to say, okay, we're going to put a stop to this right now. Or we're going to do some production stoppage. Jumping back in that line is going to be pretty difficult, I imagine. Right?
Jamie Lansdell: Right. I mean, the global semiconductor industry, I think is worth $440 billion these days. It's a huge industry. It's absolutely enormous. And you think about the investment that's going into that. China is putting in $1 trillion worth of investment between now and 2025. So, really this is going to grow exponentially over many years. And the very small subset of that, which is automotive procurement.
Chris Parker: 3%.
Jamie Lansdell: It's tiny. And really as software continues to eat the world, it's the microchips that are the teeth. It's important that the growth of every industry, as we start to migrate, as we start to add on more and more technology, it's all leaning on this semiconductor industry. And that small sub-segment that is automotive, the automotive industry need to understand that and be investing in it in the same way. And in fact, I think it's my view that the OEMs need to be bringing a lot more of this technology in-house. What can they do to invest in their own semiconductor facilities? What can they do to be investing in their own integrated systems? This is where they design the system, and then they fabricate them and the foundries are all in-house. And I think we're going to see a lot more OEMs going in this direction. Like we have perhaps with battery technology as well.
Chris Parker: You're talking about more like vertical integration? Yeah. All right. So, as we come to a close on this discussion, what would you say are some of the biggest lessons that have been learned? What can people listening to this kind of takeaway and look at themselves with, or start up conversations with their own forwarding partners, logistics and things like that?
Jamie Lansdell: Well, I think as we've talked about is the impacts of semiconductors aren't just limited to automotive supply chains. Any technology, almost of every factory in the world of whatever commodity is being made, a migration to more advanced technology is happening in every facet. So, the impact of semiconductors is going to be wide-reaching and have implications into almost every vertical and every area of business. Now we as Expeditors, we have versions of me in every geography, supporting our customers and helping best prepare them for what is going on in their organization, what is going on in their material planning. Do they understand the requirements of how to procure this type of commodity, the lead times associated to it, and to make sure that we're bringing through some of these lessons that we've seen from other areas and make sure everyone is best prepared for any of these supply chain impacts.
Jamie Lansdell: So, really for us, as Expeditors, we want to share this knowledge. We want our customers to be best prepared. We want to help this war room planning of what if. What if this happens again? What if these components dry up again or there's some other volatility event. How can tools like visibility or inbound supply chain planning, or just in times, just in case increasing your inventory levels of particular commodity sites, just in case something happens on these critical components moving forward. So, there's a lot of industry knowledge internally, that we would love to be able to share with anyone listening to this podcast today.
Chris Parker: Yeah. And I think that's an excellent point too, is that this isn't just a like, while this is an automotive problem, the lessons learned from this can apply to any industry and to any organization. There's lots to take from this, for sure. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you hanging out with me and talking me through this. If people want to get into contact with you or to learn more about this, how can they get in touch?
Jamie Lansdell: Well, the first way is as always is head over to our website to www.expeditors.com. A plethora of information about different verticals of how we support and versions of me in different market subsections. And there's a contact us page within that, that can help you lead through to me. If not, find me on LinkedIn or reach out to your standard Expeditors contact. And we will love to support and have some interesting conversations, just like we have today and help through any questions within semiconductors, the automotive industry, or any other area. We'd love to get engaged with you.
Chris Parker: Excellent. Jamie, well, again, thank you so much and take care. Thank you.
Jamie Lansdell: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Chris Parker: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you've got any questions or want to learn more about today's topic, check out the show notes for more information. And before you go, make sure you're subscribed on whatever podcast app you're using so you won't miss the next episode. To learn more about Expeditors, you can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or simply visit us at expeditors.com. Take care, and I'll see you next time.
