A company official said that Tata Motors are looking towards various ways to offset the impact of semiconductor shortage on their production activities and sales. The company would include direct buying from the stockists and make change in the product configurations.
The company has been looking at different types of chips that could be used in the components where the supply situation was severe. The company is a seller of the models like Nexon, Harrier and Safari in the domestic market.
The company has expected for the improvement in supplies in the second half of the fiscal as the situation would remain challenging in the current quarter.
Shailesh Chandra, the President Passenger Vehicles Business Unit of Tata Motors, had said that they were impacted due to the uncertainty of supplies but had managed so far. These remarks were made in the reply to whether or not the company was facing issues in their production activities because of semiconductor shortage. He also added that the company was considering on reworking some of the product variants as to minimise the production loss.
Mr Chandra said that they were looking for different semiconductors and had been procuring from the stockists directly, they were also trying to see if a standard chip could be used in the certain components where they had been facing stress. He said that to prevent from losing sales, they were looking at a trim mix.
Mr Chandra said that the company in order to manage the situation were working closely with chip suppliers.
The semiconductors were the silicon chips that cater to control and memory functions in the products like automobiles, cellphones, computers and many other electronic items.
In the auto industry, the use of semiconductors has increased all over the globe in the recent times, as new models come with many more electronic features.
The global supply chains had been led to a shortage due to enhanced demand for automobiles in the past few months which has put pressure on them.
Mr Chandra said that the situation in the current quarter would remain hard and the things would improve in the second half of this fiscal.
He also said that the situation was very uncertain and hard to predict.
