Will the storms in China affect console supply?

[NJ5]

TheBigFatJ said:

bigjon said:
Yes, It take 2-3 weeks for a Wii to cycle throught the supply chain. I do not believe it snows much in the coastal regions. I guess I should check CNN, but the factories are VERY close to the sea. To have an good supply chain you need to cut down on distance where ever possible.

 

Do you have any more information about how the supply chain works or how Nintendo affected it to get extra Wiis into stores during the holiday shopping season?

Nintendo said that in normal conditions (shipping by boat), the consoles take 20 days from the factory to shelves in USA (10 days by boat + 10 days to the shelves). No figure was given for Europe though.

The obvious way of getting as many consoles as possible to shelves during the holidays is to divert some supply to planes instead of boats, which allows you to temporarily reduce the factory->shelf time (but will cause shortages once the shipments start going by boat again). Effectively, they loaded up part of January's supply in planes and sold it during December instead.

Nintendo did mention plane shipping in some interviews and articles, but I can't be bothered to fetch the links right now.