Just in Time

Just In Time Concept

Just-in –Time manufacturing is a new philosophy of manufacturing management that provides a set of tools and techniques to compete in the increasingly fierce market and enables organizations to provide better value in their offerings by constantly improving their operations and eliminating waste from the system. The core logic of the JIT is one of elimination of waste in a manufacturing system using a deliberate method. The crux of the JIT philosophy is to go one step further, unlike traditional way, and deliberately create some disturbances in the system in order to uncover the problem. Once the problems are exposed, the organization will work towards solving the problem and restoring smooth production rates.

Under ideal conditions a company operating at JIT manufacturing system would purchase only enough materials each day to meet that days needs. Moreover, the company would have no goods still in process at the end of the day, and all goods completed during the day would have been shipped immediately to customers. As this sequence suggests, "just-in-time" means that raw materials are received just in time to go into production, manufacturing parts are completed just in time to be assembled into products, and products are completed just in time to be shipped to customers.

Although few companies have been able to reach this ideal, many companies have been able to reduce inventories only to a fraction of their previous level. The result has been a substantial reduction in ordering and warehousing costs, and much more efficient and effective operations. In a just in time environment, the flow of goods is controlled by a pull approach. The pull approach can be explained as follows. At the final assembly stage a signal is sent to the preceding work station as to the exact amount of parts and materials that would be needed over the next few hours to assemble products to fill customer orders, and only that amount of materials and parts is...