10k Jaguar Land Rover cars stranded in UK workshops for 4 months as JLR faces severe parts shortage

British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is suffering from a huge parts shortage in the UK as its workshops are facing a severe crisis and are running out of courtesy cars.

According to Car Dealer Magazine, around 10,000 cars are awaiting parts all around the United Kingdom with half of them being stuck off the road at dealerships. The ‘significant parts shortage’ issue was addressed at a JLR dealership network summit and it would not get any better for another 6 weeks.

JLR UK client care director, Andrew Woolliscroft, admitted at the event the issue is currently seriously impacting the carmaker, its dealers and customers. According to the British trade publication, some 5,000 customers are currently driving courtesy cars as their cars are off the road awaiting parts.

“We’ve run out of cars to put clients into and we’ve run out of space to park the cars waiting on parts,” Woolliscroft told the conference. “We’ve nearly stopped our workshops from being able to operate and it’s unacceptable.”

Dealers have been reporting customers being unhappy and the dealers themselves are also feeling annoyed at the ways the cars have been piling up their lots. A customer who owns a 2017 highest-spec Range Rover Velar told Car Dealer Magazine that he has been waiting on a part for 4 months.

His SUV has been undrivable since the front driver assistance radar failed following a small bump. The customer also told the publication that there are at least 5 other JLR models awaiting parts at the same service centre.

One of the issues for the British parts supply issue is JLR’s newest global parts logistics centre, Mercia Park. The project sees 18 warehouses condensed into a massive million-square-foot site as well as bringing in new parts suppliers and combining a number of legacy systems into one.

These changes have reportedly not been going smoothly and even JLR’s Woolliscroft admitted to summit attendees that it was a ‘mess’. “Mercia is a bottleneck and we have a backlog of orders,” he said.

The JLR representative continues, “We have a backlog in inbound – as of today we have 80 lorries waiting to unload. We have a backlog in packing, as those parts are unboxed and packed into the warehouse, and we have a backlog outbound as those orders are picked, packed and dispatched.”

Woolliscroft also informed attendees that “most of the time it is not that we don’t have the part, it’s just jammed in the system”. He also added that the “team on the ground are not reaching the operational level they should be” and that the system is “inefficient”.

So far the parts issue has mainly been affecting UK owners which is one of JLR's most important markets. A JLR spokesperson told Car Dealer Magazine that it is “working closely with distribution partner, Unipart, to quickly resolve the issue and ensure the service returns to normal as soon as possible for our clients.”