JUST-IN-TIME MANUFACTURING
Use to remind you that having resources waiting to be used wastes money and space.
It’s often assumed that Just-in-Time (JIT) Manufacturing was devised by the Japanese in the 1970s. It wasn’t. The Empire State Building, built in 1931–32, is a great example of JIT building. New York City refused the builders permission to store materials on site in case it disrupted traffic on Fifth Avenue. To overcome the problem, the architects, working without a computer, scheduled the delivery of all materials so that they could be unloaded from a truck and immediately fitted into place on the building. At the height of the construction, trucks were drawing up outside the building site every ten minutes!
Originally JIT referred to the production of goods or services to meet the customers’ requirements, on time and to the standard required (see Section 10). Over the years, it has come to mean continuous improvement and the elimination of waste. It is this latter meaning of JIT that this entry considers.
WHAT TO DO
- Recognise that there are seven types of waste that you should seek to reduce/eliminate. They are:
- storage costs: these may be real e.g. the expense of having a stock control and security system in place or an opportunity cost;
- inventory waste arising from damage, theft and deterioration during storage;
- overproduction, leading to unsold goods and more profitable activities not being taken up;
- processing waste arising from inefficient use of materials and/or waste resulting from product defects;
- waste of motion during the production of the goods: this includes performing unnecessary tasks such as form filling or having to move around unnecessarily during the process;
- transportation waste/costs arising from frequent small deliveries and/or the need to obtain materials urgently or face production hold-ups;
- production delays arising from late or non-delivery of essential materials.
As a manager, you need to review each source of waste and device ways to eliminate or reduce the number of times such problems can arise.
- Some of the ideas that you might consider adopting include the following:
- introducing a policy of Good Housekeeping: this includes ensuring that within the workplace tidiness, orderliness, cleanness, standardisation and discipline are maintained (see Theory 82);
- benchmarking your operation against similar functions both within and outside your industry and applying best practice to your operation (see Theory 83);
- regularly using Ishikawa’s Fishbone Model (see Theory 81) to analyse your production processes and identify weaknesses and defects; don’t wait for a problem to become obvious, use Ishikawa’s approach to spot and correct problems before they become an issue;
- exploring what is the ideal batch size for optimal production runs and consider using a multi-skilled approach to production; research indicates that a multi-skilled workforce has higher levels of job satisfaction, motivation, productivity and flexibility than mono-skilled workers (see Theory 26);
- using machines that have some level of autonomous capability; this will free up the worker to do something more productive than just ‘watch the machine’ during the production process;
- when designing any system/process, ensure that each stage acts as a check on the work of the previous stage; in this way, errors can be identified during the production process and not just at the end—when it is too late to take effective corrective action.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
- How often do you review your team’s production processes?
- Which organisations could you benchmark your production processes against?