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Walmart has JIT down to a proactive science. If they see a heatwave coming, they allocate more ACs and water to a region. It takes years to train good JIT supp

• FakeComments 8y ago
  While we’re calling out good examples, Toyota’s whole Kanban system is the root of most JIT manufacturing or business, as a formalized method. Toyota was very successful with it. I didn’t mean to imply it couldn’t be done, but rather three points: - It’s very challenging to get right, requires a lot of buy in and restructuring, and takes time to transition to. - It’s an extremely risky thing to do if, unlike Toyota, your value proposition isn’t manufacturing, but instead smoothing the supply between a manufacturer and a customer. - Most people implementing JIT have a poor model of the variances, and undervalue disruptions (in terms of harm to customers, lost goodwill, etc — the intangibles). Taken together, I think it’s extremely challenging to do JIT for grocery stores, and they’re basically building a black swan nest, no matter how careful. Spoilage in exchange for consistency is what I pay them for: removing that risks removing the value they deliver me.