INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW TO JUST-IN-TIME, LEAN PRODUCTION, AND COMPLEMENTARY PARADIGMS

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INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

The just-in-time (JIT) concept was first developed and implemented over a span of many years by Toyota Motor Corporation under the appellation of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Its over- arching goal is to enable production of a variety of end items in a timely and efficient manner, smoothly synchronized with the production and delivery of component materials and without reliance on the conventional stratagem of keeping extra work-in-process and finished goods inventory. By the 1970s, Toyota’s just-in-time system had evolved into a remarkable source of competitive advantage, achieving higher quality and productivity and lower cost than traditional mass production systems. Indeed, the Toyota Production System was widely credited with buoying Toyota through the economic turmoil following the 1973 oil crisis. Though originally limited mostly to Toyota and its supplier network, the TPS concept spread to other Japanese manufacturers and by the early 1980s was receiving tremendous attention from manufacturers worldwide. Over the years, a number of labels, such as stockless production and zero inventory, have been applied to TPS-like approaches for man- aging production and inventory. JIT, however, has become the accepted, albeit imprecise, term.

A broader conceptualization of world-class manufacturing called ‘‘lean production’’ was realized through the landmark studies conducted by MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program. This lean production concept was created based on extensive benchmarking of automobile manufacturers’ best practices worldwide—arguably, principally those of Japanese manufacturers and the Toyota Produc- tion System. From a practical standpoint, lean production may be considered as an expanded view of JIT / TPS that includes additional intraorganizational and interorganizational aspects such as the role of suppliers and information sharing in not only the manufacturing stage but also in product development and distribution.

In the remainder of this chapter, we first provide a more detailed discussion of JIT / TPS in Section 2, including its philosophy and implementation issues. In Section 3, we examine the kanban system, widely used in JIT for control of production and inventory, and present a case study of JIT / kanban implementation. Section 4 follows with an examination of JIT’s relation to complementary approaches such as total quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance (TPM), together with a case study of their joint implementation. In Section 5, we examine lean production as an extension of JIT, explore the relationship of JIT to theory of constraints (TOC), and conclude with a brief consideration of applications to service industries of JIT, TOC, and other manufacturing-based ap- proaches.

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