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Just-in-time, pioneered by Taiichi Ohno
in Japan
at the Toyota car assembly plants in the early 1970s,
is a manufacturing organization philosophy.
JIT cuts waste by supplying parts only
when the assembly process requires them. At the heart of JIT lies the
kanban, the Japanese word for card. This kanban card is sent to
the warehouse to reorder a standard quantity of parts as and when they have been used up in
the assembly/manufacturing process. JIT requires precision, as the
right parts must arrive "just-in-time" at the right position (work
station at the assembly line). It is used primarily for
high-volume repetitive flow manufacturing processes.
Historically, the JIT philosophy arose out of
two other things:
1. Japan's wish to improve the quality
of its production. At that time, Japanese companies had a bad reputation
as far as quality of manufacturing and car manufacturing in particular was
concerned.
2. Kaizen,
also a Japanese method of continuous improvement.
The Just-in-time framework
regards inventories as a poor excuse for bad planning, inflexibility,
wrong machinery, quality problems, etc. The target of JIT is to speed up
customer response while minimizing inventories at the same time.
Inventories help to response quickly to changing customer demands, but inevitably cost money and increase the needed working capital.
Typical attention areas of JIT
implementations include:
- inventory reduction
- smaller production lots and batch
sizes
- quality control
- complexity reduction and transparency
- flat organization structure and
delegation
- waste minimization
Through the arrival of Internet and
Supply Chain Planning software, companies have in the mean
time extended Just-in-time manufacturing externally, by demanding
from their suppliers to deliver inventory to the factory only when it's
needed for assembly, making JIT manufacturing, ordering and delivery
processes even speedier, more flexible and more efficient. In this way
Integrated Supply Networks (Demand Networks) or Electronic Supply Chains
are being formed. Just-in-time is sometimes referred to as 'Lean Production'.
Compare:
Kaizen | Deming
Cycle | Six
Sigma | Value
Chain | Value
Stream Mapping | Bricks and
Clicks |
Delta Model
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