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Just in Time Concept
Just-in-time (JIT) is a principle of stock
management, applied with big success in numerous Japanese organizations,
which is characterized by the maintenance of raw materials and stock
components just in sufficient quantity to maintain the productive
process at the moment. At the boundary, the stock quantities are null
since the only stocks of existent raw materials are exactly the ones
that are being transformed.
This kind of stock management can be
traduced in strong reductions of the amounts of stocks investments,
releasing liquidity for other purposes and in the storage costs
reduction, space and personnel. However, to work efficiently and without
chocking the productive process, JIT obliges to the maintenance of
privileged elations with suppliers.
Applied to production, JIT generally
relies on an information system known as kanban (card).
Kanbans referent
to manufacturing orders move in the opposite direction of the production
flow – with the kanbans number is limited and the manufacturing orders
are always issued to downstream in the manufacturing process (depending
on its needs), such avoids the accumulation of stocks in the different
process phases.
Translated from Portuguese
by Susana Saraiva, Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese translation
specialist. Contact: spams@sapo.pt.
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