It is a mix of reasons, things like the AKM and Renesas fires caused the remaining fabs that make similar products to get slammed.
Consumer electronics sales rose last year as people worked from home and purchased new computers, switches, audio devices, etc. and that ate into the buffers suppliers try to keep. Basically all the buffers are at 0.
Lock downs around the world caused production to slow or even stop in some cases, all of a sudden you get an email that the assembly house is closed for some number of weeks or they are running at half speed as they need to social distance and that means they can only operate every other machine.
Lead times for even basic devices are very long, the official lead time for a 24LC32A-I/P DIP version is 52 weeks, SOIC is a little better but when they sell out it is back to next July for more.
An article out of Taiwan was sent to me by a vendor, it talked about how they need to build more machines to solve the semiconductor shortage but they can't because they can't get the chips they need to build the machines due to the semiconductor shortage.
There is no single problem and no single solution. Each day for me is about figuring out what the current issue is, how to solve it and to guess what the next issue will be and try to get ahead of it. The Taiwan level 3 alert, in place since May, was not expected and hit us all hard. Taiwan had been very careful on screening people entering the country but they had a COVID outbreak anyway and that is causing a lot of delays in the production flow.
