†Materials Innovation Institute (M2i), Delft 2600 GA, The Netherlands.
‡Institute for Environmental Sciences (CML,) Leiden University, Leiden 2311 EZ, The Netherlands.
Environ Sci Technol. 2015 Jun 2;49(11):6740-50. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00206. Epub 2015 May 22.
In 2010, Chinese export restrictions caused the price of the rare earth element neodymium to increase by a factor of 10, only to return to almost normal levels in the following months. This despite the fact that the restrictions were not lifted. The significant price peak shows that this material supply chain was only weakly resistant to a major supply disruption. However, the fact that prices rapidly returned to lower levels implies a certain resilience. With the help of a novel approach, based on resilience theory combined with a material flow analysis (MFA) based representation of the neodymium magnet (NdFeB) supply chain, we show that supply chain resilience is composed of various mechanisms, including (a) resistance, (b) rapidity, and (c) flexibility, that originate from different parts of the supply chain. We make recommendations to improve the capacity of the NdFeB system to deal with future disruptions and discuss potential generalities for the resilience of other material supply chains.
2010 年，中国的出口限制使得稀土元素钕的价格上涨了 10 倍，但在接下来的几个月里又几乎回落到正常水平。尽管没有取消限制。价格的显著峰值表明，这条材料供应链对重大供应中断的抵抗力很弱。然而，价格迅速回落到较低水平这一事实意味着存在一定的弹性。我们借助一种新颖的方法，基于弹性理论和基于磁体供应链的物质流分析（MFA）的表示，表明供应链弹性由各种机制组成，包括（a）阻力、（b）迅速性和（c）灵活性，这些机制源自供应链的不同部分。我们提出了一些建议，以提高 NdFeB 系统应对未来中断的能力，并讨论了其他材料供应链弹性的潜在普遍性。
