JIT may have originated at Toyota, but Toyota's version of JIT is not what is nowadays commonly referred to as JIT. Toyota's production sytem is a lean manufact

JIT may have originated at Toyota, but Toyota's version of JIT is not what is nowadays commonly referred to as JIT. Toyota's production sytem is a lean manufacturing method where stages of production are rate matched (ie operation B is using parts at the same rate operation A is producing them), but there still are buffers of inventory between stages. The goal is to make the whole system communicate in such a way that when one part needs to change rate, everything else changes rate at the same time. In conventional JIT, the goal is specifically to minimize inventory by minimizing the time between when something is produced and when it is consumed. This is good from an accounting perspective as money that would be tied up in inventory can be put to other uses such as investments. JIT is about eliminating the variability for which you would need buffers, really the opposite of what Toyota does.