In conjunction with ongoing efforts to share supply chain management information related to the ongoing COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak, we have called reader attention to recently released member survey research data from The Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA). Members are noted as 6000 industry participants, 85 percent of which are located in China. Our previous highlights were published on March 30, and before that on March 17.
In each of these prior updates, we reminded our community that he most significant lessons from black swan shock events was the latent discovery of significant supply disruption among the cascading tiers of supply networks. Eventually, downstream suppliers either assess the impacts, incur added impacts, and the surprises turned out to be much more significant than initial estimate. 
According to the latest termed 6th survey ECIA survey release which was conducted the week of April 13th:
“The survey ended April 20th reflects a significant renewal in concern regarding supply chain impacts and end-market destruction due to COVID-19. This growing pessimism by survey respondents is broad-based across component categories, market segments and stages of the supply chain. While concerns related to raw material supply disruption declined notably, the number of respondents seeing a serious or severe impact on the electronic components production and end-market losses jumped by 12% and 11% respectively between the previous and most recent survey. Expectation regarding the loss of end-market demand grew the greatest in the consumer electronics segment as those anticipating a decline jumping to 50% of respondents”
The Automotive and Industrial Electronics markets continuing to represent the segments of greatest concern with expectations of a decline growing to 62% and 60% respectively. Despite expectations for weak end-market demand, the confidence in order backlog remains quite strong across the board.”
Contrast the above statements to that of the survey conducted on March 2, as factories in China were attempting to resume a semblance of prior normal production volumes:
“… it appears that the largest number of companies with visibility on the supply chain expect the impact of the crisis to be moderate and the disruption to last until somewhere between the end of April and the end of May.” The report further added: “However, it appears that lead times are expected to increase on average 2 to 3 weeks for electronic components.”
Indeed, history tends to repeat with different iterations. The notions of cascading impacts either downstream or upstream in customer demand and supply networks traverse thru a discovery and expectation adjustment process.
What makes the ongoing magnitude of the COVID-19 disruption is that unlike previous major disruptions, this one involves rather significant simultaneous cascading implications for both the demand and supply aspects of high tech and consumer electronics supply chains.
The complete synopsis including charts reflecting the latest iteration of survey can be reviewed at thus ECIA web link.
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