I think it's the hope of many that "just in time" dies from COVID. Bring back local sourcing, bring back warehousing, reduce minor design changes since now you have a warehouse of stuff.
I've been looking at sanders on the Recon site, and part of me just keeps thinking about sanding pads for them. Will you be able to get one is 20-30 years.
Any tool with a consumable has these problems. Filters, Bags, Pads, etc. Bits like sand paper are less of a concern as it is more or less universal. You can always punch holes in stuff from the local store worst case.
This is something I thought about when buying my DDF40, anyone makes dowels. But a domino is just festool, and how much do you want to be cutting your own dominos.
You see the issues of cars and production stopping because of things like chip shortages. Maybe if the cars used less chips, and what was used was made more locally (same hemisphere), and less specialized.
The early days of covid showed the issues. Things like toilet paper, it wasn't even so much that people were hoarding, it was that the system is set for a stable demand, soon as everyone spend way more time at home, demand went up and threw the whole system out of whack. There was no extra capacity to be had, and there was no warehouses of it since no one spends millions to warehouse something that takes a lot of space and sells for next to nothing. Those making product just never designed in a plan for a sudden shift in the market.
I bought stuff I expected to need for projects, some of that worked out, other things are still un-needed, and there were things I never thought would be an issue that suddenly were in shortage.
For sure, for the next few years, anyone building a home is going to build for more shortage for goods.
