Japan Earthquake Affects U.S. Auto Industry in a Variety of Ways

When nature strikes with this kind of speed and force and causes such widespread damage it is hard to imagine a swifter way of reducing a city to a smoking pile of rubble. We can see instantly and graphically exactly how nature moves with such intense force creating chaos and catastrophe.

Survivors are busy working on clean up and rebuilding plans while the rest of the world attempts to help them and give support. With all that was destroyed I am personally wondering exactly how long the recovery will really take. I wonder this because of how long it seems to be taking us to repair and rebuild some areas of our country after they were hit with serious natural disasters. One thing to consider about the recovery in Japan is that their economy is very important to the United States since we have become so interdependent on each other. The thing Americans need now is the swift recovery of Japans auto industry.

Japan being the third largest economy in the world is integral to our efforts to succeed in a global economy with regard to the automotive industries. In other words we rely very heavily on Japans economy and their auto industry in order for our industries to thrive. The faster they can recover the better it will be for everyone.

In light of that fact there is considerable reasoning behind the thoughts of the world pulling together to support Japans recovery. We have done this once before of course that particular catastrophe and subsequent rebuilding effort was of our own doing, but the rebuild definitely helped the United States and the world economy in the long run.

There are certain supplier situations in place where our automotive industries will have resources available from other countries but there are still quite a few components that only come from Japan, which could cause some of the manufacturing plants who need these parts to wait longer than normal to get them. This Bottle neck may cause delays in production which ultimately may postpone delivery of goods, and simultaneously the cost of those goods will increase.

To the General public the connections may not be obvious but having worked in an auto supply industry there are links and connections between most major auto manufacturing economies, and these dependencies can be a weakness in the system which ordinarily would not present such problems. It would be shortsighted For Americans to not understand the importance of helping Japan rebuild swiftly.

Once Japans supply chain is reconnected there will still be an adjustment period since many factories still work under the program called "just in time" With the just in time production protocol your parts flow is basically dictated by your production scheduling estimates so if suppliers fail to deliver a specific then all other related processes could get pushed back to the point where delays can cause layoffs, even though temporary, and missed deliveries on our end of the business.

The long term recovery issue for Japan could prove to be one a serious blow to their fragile economy since they were already suffering on this front. On the other hand this could be an opportunity for other auto supply countries to pick up the slack and prove themselves viable in a world economy that relies so heavily on automotive industries.

To those of us watching this epic transformation on the world stage this process should be enlightening and educational for most Americans as we may learn from the Japanese ability to pull together as one which is something we need to emulate here.

One of the highlights that really hit home for me the has been watching the situation with their nuclear plants and I am most impressed with the workers who went back into those plants to make sure they were stabilized, those workers should be lauded as heroes across the world. It is obvious that there must be emergency repair workers in place that can be cooled on to fix a plant in this kind of emergency, and i have seen numerous job postings looking for nuclear workers from the U.S. to head over to Japan to help with the repair work. If I were a qualified nuclear technician I would be on the first plane over there!

At the end of the day everyone on the planet should be hoping that the Japanese can rebound quickly and that we can all learn from the situation with regard to their handling of their nuclear plants in a time of great crisis. Personally I wish them luck and hope that it turns around very quickly for everyones benefit.

Thank you for reading my articles here on Yahoo! Associated Content.

Sources:
Personal experience, and personal opinion.