Delivery bottleneck

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Out of shelves due to Hurricane Lane (August 2018)

A shortage of supply ( english supply bottleneck ) is in the economic disruption of supply availability and readiness to deliver or suddenly significantly increased demand that can not be adequately met.

General

Delivery bottlenecks are among the availability gaps . Delivery bottlenecks can specifically represent a supply gap , but they can also be traced back to excess demand and affect all conceivable products . Such bottlenecks are of particular importance if there are no substitute goods as alternatives or if the bottleneck results in life-threatening or serious illnesses or deficiency diseases or if existing ones are made worse. Delivery bottlenecks are visible through gaps in the shelf .

causes

Can offer gaps by production bottlenecks occur ( defective production , loss of production , strikes , technical failure or shortage of intermediate goods or intermediates ) when import quotas or import permits are not granted or if higher selling prices in foreign countries to export make cheaper.

A sudden excess demand can develop above all if the competition on the supplier side is very small and market saturation has not yet been reached for the customer . The main cause is often under- or over-employment among providers. The excess demand occurs below the equilibrium price . It tends to lead to rising prices, there is an inflationary effect. Natural disasters in particular can lead to sudden hamster purchases , which retailers cannot counter immediately by increasing their supply. Also pandemics like the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to supply shortages. In February 2020, Apple and Nintendo reported that there had been delivery bottlenecks for certain products due to the shortage of Chinese components .

Agricultural market

The agricultural market has a low supply elasticity or even an inverse supply elasticity, in which there is a deliberately anti-market reaction to price movements. The inelastic supply is due on the one hand to weather conditions that cannot be influenced ( crop failures ) and on the other hand to the long period between the investment decision and the availability of agricultural products and often long ripening times. A coffee bush, for example, does not produce the first yields until five years after planting, the maximum is only expected after ten to twelve years.

A typical supply gap occurs on the agricultural market when agricultural products cannot be supplied in the usual quantities and / or product quality due to drought or other natural disasters due to poor harvests . The consequences are usually exorbitant increases in agricultural prices , if there are again no substitution options and short-term imports are not possible due to existing agricultural protectionism . These supply gaps can escalate into a supply crisis.

Energy market

Characteristic features on the energy market on the supply side are the cable-relatedness in sales , the insufficient storage capacity and the high capital intensity . The offer on the energy market is characterized by the very limited storage capacity possible, so that delivery bottlenecks can arise quickly. The storage capacity is limited to strategic oil reserves and gas reserves . Electrical energy can only be stored to a limited extent and must also be consumed at the time of generation. Weather- related disruptions in the generation area (such as calm in wind energy ) or on supply lines (such as the breakdown of high-voltage lines in a storm or snow ) usually lead to immediate delivery bottlenecks.

Germany's dependence on imports of natural gas from Russia led to a supply crisis in January 2009 because the dispute between Russia and Ukraine led to enormous gas supply bottlenecks. Higher gas reserves can alleviate the supply emergency.

Delivery bottlenecks play a major role, especially for goods that require a high level of security of supply , as is the case with agricultural products or energy . That is why the issue of delivery bottlenecks has also focused on delivery bottlenecks for pharmaceuticals since 2009 .

Pharmaceutical market

In the course of globalization , practically all trivial drugs and many modern medicinal products are manufactured exclusively in emerging countries such as India and China ; as a result, it always comes back to supply shortages ( English drug shortage ). Production downtimes (mostly abroad), poor product quality, but also price policy preferences such as drug discount agreements with statutory health insurance companies are named as causes . The latter results in pharmaceutical-specific causes such as “market withdrawal” and “market withdrawal”, in which there are no more price negotiations with the health insurance companies, the drug loses its central pharmaceutical number (PZN), is automatically deleted after three months as withdrawn and is no longer available in Germany. Around 90% of delivery bottlenecks in oncology are due to quality defects in production. The consequence of delivery bottlenecks is always a deterioration in drug therapy safety. They influence both patient safety and the success of the individual therapy.

The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) defines the delivery bottleneck as an interruption of a delivery that is likely to exceed two weeks in the usual scope or a significantly increased demand that cannot be adequately met. Typical demand-related delivery bottlenecks occur with flu waves or epidemics / pandemics , when too few vaccines are available and the supply is inelastic at short notice.

Delivery bottlenecks for pharmaceuticals are particularly problematic because they are relevant to supply, especially in the case of chronic diseases . The BfArM offers an overview of current supply bottlenecks for human medicines (without vaccines) in Germany. The reports are made by the pharmaceutical company and are based on the voluntary commitment declared in the Pharmadialog to report delivery bottlenecks for supply-relevant drugs. Since June 2009 there have been entries in the list of delivery and supply bottlenecks. According to the Ärzteblatt , the supply bottlenecks for pharmaceuticals increased steadily. In 2015 there were 40 reports, in 2016 81 cases were reported, in 2017 the number rose to 108, it doubled in 2018 to 268 reports; 216 cases had already been registered by October 2019.

As a result of the spread of the coronavirus and the associated forced vacations, quarantines and interruptions in delivery routes, bottlenecks in the German pharmaceutical market are feared. The reason is Germany's massive dependence on active ingredient manufacturers in Asia - the majority of them are based in China, some of them in the particularly affected province of Hubei.

Delivery bottlenecks in the GDR

In the GDR, as in other socialist countries , delivery bottlenecks were part of everyday life. The main cause was the lack of transparency about the actual need for capital and consumer goods in the planned economy, as well as the permanent lack of foreign exchange , which caused imports to fail. "There are frequent complaints about delivery bottlenecks, cost overruns, quality defects and increasing gaps in the range ...". "Supply difficulties and delivery bottlenecks, which influenced the standard of living of the population and led to stagnations in the East German economy, were the order of the day." To cover up delivery bottlenecks, a variety of alternative foods were offered: A pork cheek ( fat cheek ) was a substitute instead of a chop , the Club-Cola came on the market from April 1967 for the Coca-Cola , which was not licensed in the GDR . The Intershops , founded in December 1962, offered Western products for Western foreign exchange, which meant that delivery bottlenecks could be alleviated.

economic aspects

In general, delivery bottlenecks tend to occur where the degree of self-sufficiency is low or there is a lack of redundancy . Is in a State , the import dependency of a product especially high or there in a company only one supplier or suppliers for certain intermediate goods , they can Monostructures production losses or gaps in particular in the just-time production in- contribute. At Volkswagen , for example, the delivery stop by two automotive suppliers in August 2016 revealed the weakness that excessive dependency in the procurement of vehicle parts in just-in-time production can lead to immediate production downtimes.

A high safety stock in the storage can minimize supply-induced delivery bottlenecks. There are only limited options for storing energy in the energy sector . There are demand-related delivery bottlenecks in hamster purchases, which politicians can try to prevent through moral appeals . The state intervention , by minimum prices , production quotas and subsidies are trying to increase the supply. The state must take various measures to ensure the security of food supply. The civil emergency reserve ( emergency stock ) serves to partially compensate for food shortages in the event of a crisis. Supply crises lead to sometimes extremely inflated prices that are not affordable for broad sections of the population. Depending on the proportion in the shopping cart , these prices can contribute to inflation .

If customers find gaps in the shelves, 37% buy another brand ( substitute goods ), 21% change stores , 17% postpone the purchase, 16% buy a different package size and 9% give up the purchase. The main causes of gaps in the shelves are listing differences (46%), problems in the order process (29%), problems with refilling (14%), production and delivery bottlenecks (6%) and other causes (5%).

Web links / literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Cassel / Volker Ulrich, AMNOG-Check 2017: Health economic analyzes of the supply of pharmaceutical innovations , 2017, p. 124
  2. ↑ Lothar Wildmann, Introduction to Economics, Microeconomics and Competition Policy , Volume I, 2007, p. 55
  3. ↑ Norbert Bach / Wolfgang Buchholz / Bernd Eichler (Eds.), Business Models for Value Creation Networks , 2003, p. 335
  4. ↑ Walter Kortmann, Microeconomics: Application-related Basics , 2006, p. 409
  5. ↑ t-online .de of February 18, 2020, Apple is withdrawing sales forecast due to coronavirus consequences
  6. ↑ Werner Pepels (ed.) / Paul Ammann, B2B-Handbuch Operations-Management , 2009, p. 40
  7. ^ Martin Gester, Minimum Price Systems in Agricultural Foreign Trade , 1963, p
  8. ↑ Werner Lachmann, Development Policy , Volume 3, 1994, p. 83 f.
  9. ↑ Philipp Büsch, The idea of ​​competition in energy law , 2014, p. 71
  10. ↑ Urs Dolinski / Hans-Joachim Ziesing, The energy market in Bavaria until 1990 , 1974, p. 166
  11. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE from January 6, 2009, Russia swears Germany in a long gas dispute , accessed on August 14, 2019
  12. ↑ Harald G. Schweim / J K. Schweim, Supply Bottlenecks - A Consequence of Austerity Policy and Price Competition for Medicines? , in: Deutsche Apothekerzeitung vol. 9, 2013, pp. 56-60
  13. ↑ a b Dieter Cassel / Volker Ulrich, AMNOG-Check 2017: Health economic analyzes of the supply of pharmaceutical innovations , 2017 p. 124
  14. ↑ Helmut Laschet, Controversial interim balance of the early benefit assessment established - but still very imperfect , in: IMPLICON - Health Policy Analyzes vol. 08, 2015, p. 1
  15. ↑ Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Manufacturers / Andrej Rasch, 2017, p. 2
  16. ↑ Ärzteblatt.de of October 14, 2019, the number of drug delivery bottlenecks has increased significantly
  17. ↑ Martin U. Müller : Active ingredients for 153 drugs available in Germany depend on the province of Hubei - DER SPIEGEL - Wirtschaft. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved February 20, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Martin U. Müller : Coronavirus could endanger the supply of German pharmaceuticals - DER SPIEGEL - Economy. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved February 20, 2020 .
  19. ^ German Institute for Economic Research, Handbook of the GDR Economy , 1984, p. 164
  20. ^ German Bundestag, Negotiations: Stenographic Reports. Annexes to the shorthand reports. Printed matter , Volume 500, 1994, p. 80
  21. ↑ Wolfgang Stölzle / Tina S Placzek, Yawning emptiness instead of goods , in: Lebensmittel Zeitung No. 36, 2004, p. 68
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Stölzle / Tina S Placzek, Yawning emptiness instead of goods , in: Lebensmittel Zeitung No. 36, 2004, p. 68