Just In Time (JIT) Inventory Management - share your experience

It is told the JIT is a very nice system for managing inventory, But adopting it also has practical difficulties, Can any one throw more light with their experience in the same.

Dear Mahaurkar,

Why have your raised this query of Supply Chain Management (SCM) on the HR Forum? Are you a student or a professional? What is the context of the query? Just In Time (JIT) is a suitable production system when:

• have steady production of clearly defined standard products

• a reasonable number of units made

• a high value product

• have flexible working practices and a disciplined and multi-skilled workforce

• short setup times on machines

• quality can be assured, e.g. zero defects either through good working practices or through a cost penalty

JIT is not just about inventory management. It is about the production with lean inventory as a whole. Implementing JIT requires immense study of the operations and applications of principles of industrial engineering. For the success of JIT, Production, Production Planning, Purchase and Sales have to work in tandem. JIT requires the establishment of collaboration with the suppliers.

In the Indian context, Maruti Motors is the No 1 company that has implemented JIT successfully. Another company could be Asian Paints, ACC Cements etc. I conduct training programmes in the field of Supply Chain Management(SCM). To know more about my training activities in this field, you may click the following links and download the respective documents:

Dinesh V Divekar - Procurement Faculty

Programme Structure for Various Training Programmes in Purchase and Inventory Management

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar
+91-9900155394
dineshdivekar(at)gmail(dot)com

Thanks Mr Dinesh,
I am in profession & in Production of Project based product.
Have raised this query to get feedback from the experts and their experience.
JIT is very good system for standard products, But it does not really work out in Project based, there are many issues following the same.
If you could thrown some more lights on Practical difficulties faced when we want to really want to implement JIT.
Regards

Dear Mahaurkar,
I have mentioned suitability of JIT in the previous post. JIT is not suitable for the project based work. Many times projects depend on the geography location, remoteness from the major cities, type of material requirement, complexity of the projects, duration of the projects, support from the customers etc. This is in contrast with the factory products that have steady production of clearly defined standard products.
If not JIT, PMP based project planning will help you in executing projects in organised manner. However, in your second post also you have not give complete information. What kind of projects do you handle, what type of customers do you have, variability of the customers, geographical location of the projects, whether material is imported etc. Neither technical details of the project, nor even your first name!
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar