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My understanding is that JIT, as performed by Toyota, takes into account the differences in difficulty of sourcing different inventories. If this is true, one w
by j-bos 5y ago
My understanding is that JIT, as performed by Toyota, takes into account the differences in difficulty of sourcing different inventories. If this is true, one would expect that Toyota faced shortages later than other manufacturers. Does anyone have a source proving or disproving this?
- hef19898 5y agoToyota was among the last to be hit. Also, JIT is not having zero inventory. It is about having the right amount of inventory.
- worldsayshi 5y agoPedantic comment: is that not what lean is about? Or is "lean" and jit essentially the same thing?
- hef19898 5y agoJIT, as Kanban, is part of the Toyota Production System. It is also called Lean nowadays, or simply TPS. The basic principles go back to the US defence industry in WW2, on one hand, and some ingenious ideas from the old Toyota company manufacturing looms. I also see some of these ideas, tacted assembly lines for example, as far back the Venetian Arsenal cranking out Galleons and Galleasses in unprecedented numbers in the 16th (?) century.
- tuatoru 5y agoThe conventional wisdom is that Toyota (and Honda, Nissan, etc.) learned the value of keeping buffer stocks after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.
- hef19898 5y agoJIT always has some buffer, just smaller ones than in other models. True that Japanese manufacturers increased those after 2011.
- da_chicken 5y agoIt can take into account predicted difficulties. The pandemic was difficult to predict, basically everyone predicted incorrectly, and chip supply is functionally inelastic over the short term.
- lenzm 5y agoYou don't need to know what the pandemic is specifically to plan for a global market shock. Knowing that you have a critical component with a long inelastic supply chain is enough.
- SahAssar 5y agoI'm guessing the problem is to decide what is a reasonable difficulty. Even if you plan for a global market shock, how long do you plan for that to continue? How many companies failing in your supply chain do you plan for?
- hef19898 5y agoAnd then what? Just stockpile a year of everything? At every company along the supply chain? It is the first time in my life, professional in SCM and otherwise, that something like Covid and a global trade disruption happened together with a global shortage of one class of products. No way you for see or prepare for something like that. Hindsight in 20/20, just imagine the automotive OEMs would have gotten rid of the JIT for chips and Covid (and all the other things causing the shortages) wouldn't have affected chips but, say, certain raw materials like Aluminium.
- bsder 5y ago> And then what? Just stockpile a year of everything? Or run a fab. Fabless isn't a God-given right. Vertical integration is a thing. Vertical integration got a bad reputation because financial engineering dipshits like Carl Icahn would come in and strip mine your company for the single super profitable division and destroy the rest (see: Mesta Machinery).
- forbiddenlake 5y agoYes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232469
- imeron 5y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-07/how-toyota-s-supply-chain-helped-it-weather-the-chip-shortage https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-07/how-toyot... It wasn't enough it seems.