‘Challenging Time’ for World’s ‘Supply Chain People’: Seagate CEO

Seagate’s supply chain issues are “very, very complicated,” CEO Dave Mosley told the Deutsche Bank 2021 Technology Conference Thursday. “Our devices have a lot of components in them,” and Seagate has “deep relationships” with all its suppliers. “We run factories 24/7 all quarter long, so we’ve got to make sure that those factories always have parts sitting in front of them.” The most critical disruptions have been from suppliers’ factories in Southeast Asia “being shut down temporarily” due to COVID-19 case spikes, said Mosley. “Even inside of our factories, we've had issues where the community had COVID problems.” Seagate worked “to get more than 80% of our people now vaccinated, and we're still working on communities around us, suppliers that we are very dependent on,” he said. “We're helping them get vaccinations. It's been a really, really difficult last quarter or two for the supply base that we have.” Seagate is “managing through” the global components shortages by “positioning inventory” strategically, and “having dual sources, things like that,” said the CEO. Freight and logistics concerns abound in various places around the world, said Mosley. “Not so much borders being locked down,” as happened at the “front end of the pandemic, but more just things getting bottled up in various locations,” he said. Inventory “has to be at the right place at the right time.” Said Mosley: “It's a challenging time for all supply chain people worldwide.”