Editor’s word: An earlier model of this story attributed a quote to the wrong Subaru govt. It ought to have attributed the quote to Kazuyuki Muneta, senior normal supervisor of Subaru’s buying division.

TOKYO — An enormous earthquake strikes off Japan’s northeast Pacific coast, rattling buildings as distant as Tokyo, triggering widespread energy outages, shutting down trains, unleashing landslides and sparking concern about tsunamis and radiation leaks from a close-by nuclear plant.

In its wake, a essential Japanese semiconductor plant is thrown offline, and a damaged provide chain forces Japanese automakers to droop manufacturing at vegetation throughout the nation.

For many who keep in mind, it sounds lots just like the devastating March 11, 2011, temblor that rocked Japan and the worldwide auto business 10 years in the past this week. However in an eerie flashback, this quake struck solely final month — on Feb. 13 — in nearly the very same place.

The aftermath of this newest convulsion was a jolting reminder about simply how fragile automotive provide chains stay, regardless of one of the best efforts to fortify them after the 2011 catastrophe.

Again then, double sourcing, stock stockpiling and provider transparency had been pressing focal factors of enchancment as “enterprise continuity plans” grew to become all the craze.

The business thought it will be higher ready for the following disaster. It was solely half proper.

Latest upheavals — together with the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, the continuing international microchip scarcity and final month’s haunting earthquake in Japan — present that in an business as advanced, interconnected and big because the auto enterprise, it’s unattainable to plan for all the pieces.

“There isn’t a magic of outsmarting the market, as some had in thoughts. It is probably not sensible,” says Dominik Luczak, an automotive marketing consultant and companion at McKinsey & Co. in Tokyo.

As imperfect because the troubleshooting is, automakers rolled out many enhancements to raised buttress provide chains after Japan’s 2011 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown triple whammy.

In that lethal calamity, a 9.0-magnitude quake — the largest ever recorded in Japan — unleashed a towering tsunami that swept lots of of miles of the nation’s coast, flooding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Energy Plant and triggering meltdowns at three of its reactors.

Apart from killing almost 20,000 individuals and obliterating complete cities in a swath alongside the shoreline, the disaster hammered international auto manufacturing for a lot of that yr.

Japanese automakers alone misplaced greater than 1.5 million autos of output on the peak of the disaster. Via heroic efforts, some firms — resembling Nissan and Mitsubishi — managed to recoup that loss by early 2012. However others — together with Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Subaru — nonetheless could not catch up. Toyota alone was nonetheless down 370,000 autos a yr after the quake.

All informed, the 2011 catastrophe value Japanese automakers greater than $5.60 billion.

An car has as much as 30,000 components — if even one is lacking, irrespective of how small, a automobile cannot be constructed. The business discovered this lesson the exhausting means when the 2011 earthquake rattled a semiconductor plant run by chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp., knocking it offline for months.

The ensuing chip scarcity broadsided manufacturing of 17 of the highest 20 Japan-made nameplates offered within the U.S., and idled Normal Motors and Peugeot factories within the U.S. and Europe, respectively.

In the meantime, Ford Motor Co. needed to droop orders of sure autos with paint jobs in tuxedo black and several other crimson hues as a result of it could not get a glittery metallic pigment. That additive, referred to as Xirallic, was made at solely a single plant, by a provider referred to as Merck KGaA that was little recognized earlier than the 2011 catastrophe. Its manufacturing facility, proper within the quake zone, additionally was down for months.

After the quake, automakers worldwide bolstered their catastrophe planning. However the give attention to strengthening provide chain hyperlinks was particularly acute in seismically lively Japan, which has lengthy been anticipating one other main quake within the industrial heartland alongside this nation’s central coast.

Countermeasures in Japan targeted on each stopping crises and mitigating their influence.

Automakers tried to keep away from future emergencies by reinforcing factories and different amenities to raised face up to pure disasters and even human-made ones resembling fires or explosions. In some instances, they even moved amenities out of areas flagged as potential flood zones in future tsunamis.

Mitigation techniques included higher provide chain monitoring, sooner communication with suppliers, extra versatile strategies of double sourcing and larger stockpiles of key parts.

A key enchancment was higher visibility of the stream of auto components from Tier 3 or 4 suppliers. Previously, few automakers bothered to trace parts that far down the chain. However the derailing of Renesas immediately threw a highlight on objects as seemingly insignificant as microchips.

“Earlier than the earthquake we had no info on suppliers past the Tier 2 stage,” Toyota Motor Corp. spokeswoman Shiori Hashimoto mentioned. “We had been compelled to begin from scratch.”

So Toyota created an enormous provider database referred to as RESCUE, quick for REinforce Provide Chain Below Emergency. It covers a whopping 400,000 components, as much as the Tier 10 stage in some classes.

Japan’s automakers additionally realized the significance of fast communication with suppliers when one thing goes down. In a disaster, each minute counts, particularly when racing in opposition to rivals.

Subaru, which now logs tens of hundreds of components in its new database, fashioned a unit that screens international information for flashpoints that might kink provide chains.

Because of this, it now takes Subaru only a day to get provide chain info that used to take per week to collect. Subaru now makes use of a third-party Internet-based system to verify in, a step up from the outdated phone-based method.

When the most recent quake hit at 11:08 p.m. on a Saturday, for instance, Subaru was capable of attain out the following morning, and by Monday it was getting the primary standing reviews.

“By capturing info sooner, it provides us a clearer image of what we have to do,” mentioned Kazuyuki Muneta, senior normal supervisor of Subaru’s buying division. Whereas this will not forestall a disruption, it helps decide which strains and merchandise are affected in order that early selections may also help keep away from an across-the-board suspension.

Business gamers are adopting new monitoring programs, a few of which use blockchain applied sciences, resembling that developed by way of an organization referred to as Mobi, to map provide networks in actual time.

“The answer will come not by way of one more disaster however from these applied sciences,” mentioned Matteo Fini, vice chairman for provide chain and expertise at IHS Markit. “The problem is scalability. When you apply it to 100,000 suppliers or 100,000 websites, that will probably be very troublesome.”

Certainly, not all classes had been totally absorbed. For instance, multisourcing was immediately a giant subject. But, the business’s preliminary enthusiasm for hedging its bets throughout totally different suppliers progressively waned when the financial realities of upper prices sunk in.

To at the present time, Toyota nonetheless says its largest threat is “ordering from a single provider or producing at a single web site.”

For many producers, duplicate sourcing is just too pricey on a big scale, mentioned an govt at one main Japanese provider.

“Automakers would come to us and ask us to double-source an element — can we make the identical half we’re making in Japan additionally at our plant within the U.S.,” he mentioned. “Positive, we will try this. However to have double the capability, it’ll value. I do not keep in mind many OEMs truly keen to pay.

“It is a balancing act between value and effectivity,” he mentioned.

Higher stock administration was one other reset undertaken after 2011. Maintaining extra inventory readily available — or asking suppliers to — was a giant departure for Japanese automakers, which satisfaction themselves on ultralean, just-in-time supply programs that waste little cash on storage.

Nissan Motor Co., for instance, has a brand new system that screens inventories so it might probably react extra nimbly to blips. And Toyota CFO Kenta Kon was so happy along with his firm’s new method to stock administration that he credited bigger inventories for serving to Japan’s largest automaker keep away from the manufacturing facility suspensions afflicting so many rivals within the present microchip scarcity.

Toyota, lengthy the poster little one for lean manufacturing, secured stockpiles of as much as 4 months’ provide of semiconductors, Kon mentioned on the firm’s Feb. 10 monetary outcomes announcement.

It helps that Toyota has tight relations with suppliers, bolstered by shut and fixed communication, Kon mentioned. Suppliers are keen to prioritize Toyota enterprise, he mentioned, as a result of a procurement order with Toyota is taken into account “a certain order primarily based on a certain manufacturing plan.”

Toyota stood out within the newest earnings season for claiming the chip pinch would haven’t any influence on its output. Toyota even raised its fiscal-year gross sales forecast, as business watchers resembling IHS Markit predicted the semiconductor crunch would crash international business output by 1 million autos within the first quarter alone.

In Japan, for instance, Honda was bracing for a 100,000-vehicle hit, whereas Nissan trimmed its gross sales outlook by 150,000 autos and Subaru anticipated to lose 48,000.

However Kon’s crowing was a tad untimely.

Simply three days later, Japan was rocked by the most recent temblor. The Feb. 13 earthquake injured lots of, somewhat than killing hundreds as in 2011, and its meager tsunami was measured in centimeters, not meters. However at magnitude 7.1, it nonetheless packed a potent punch.

Renesas, the chipmaker whose Naka manufacturing facility was hammered a decade earlier, was as soon as once more within the crosshairs. This time, the Naka plant quickly misplaced energy, and the corporate was compelled to droop operations to verify manufacturing facility security and the standing of its fragile clear room operations.

Renesas restarted front-end manufacturing in its clear room on Feb. 16, however the firm wasn’t capable of resume its full pre-quake manufacturing tempo till per week after the catastrophe.

Greater issues loomed at a Hitachi Astemo manufacturing facility additionally within the quake zone. Broken by the shaking, it suspended operations on Feb. 15 and did not resume shipments till Feb. 22. Japanese media reported {that a} energy outage torpedoed manufacturing of suspension programs.

Toyota, regardless of having dodged the chip scarcity, was now among the many worst affected. It needed to droop output at 9 vegetation in Japan for a number of days. The downtime hit 14 of its 28 strains within the residence market and affected nameplates such because the Toyota RAV4, C-HR and Harrier crossovers, and several other Lexus fashions, together with the LS and IS sedans and NX, UX and RX crossovers.

Toyota mentioned the shutdowns would dent output by about 31,000 autos.

Nissan additionally felt the blow; it suspended manufacturing at two vegetation for 2 days.

Automakers in Japan concede that bulletproofing provide chains is an imperfect science. However analysts say at present’s interruptions can be even worse with out the teachings of 2011.

“The business responded very nicely,” McKinsey’s Luczak mentioned of the chip scarcity. “And it was clearly a results of 10 years again, and that elevated transparency helped them to react a lot sooner. I felt the gamers had been doing exceptionally nicely across the globe in how they managed.”

Certainly, every new upheaval brings recent perception, mentioned Keita Yamanashi, Nissan’s normal supervisor for enterprise continuity planning. “Each time a pure catastrophe happens, we undergo a overview and determine some challenges we confronted. Then, we apply that to the following catastrophe,” he mentioned.

To make certain, Japanese automakers have made huge strides in reinforcing the availability chain within the residence market. However in addition they are international gamers with a rising worldwide provide base.

The subsequent huge problem will probably be replicating the Japan security web abroad.

Naoto Okamura contributed to this report.