Just In Time: The traditional concepts of Quality and customer satisfaction have been challenged in the recent years. Customer choices and perceptions have also been changing continuously. Japanese manufacturers were the first to meet these challenges by introducing many innovations in manufacturing systems and management, one of which is the philosophy of “Just in Time”.
Just-in-time (JIT) refers to a collection of practices that is designed to eliminate waste and achieve manufacturing excellence. These organizational practices encompass the entire logistics flow of materials from purchasing through production and distribution. The elements of JIT may include shared product design with suppliers and customers, movement toward single sourcing, proximate suppliers and customers, reduced set-up times, preventive maintenance, reliance on analytic tools to identify sources of defects and plant optimization layout (re)configurations, among others
Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing systems have attracted the attention of industries all over the world. The perceptible impact of JIT lies in attaining productivity and quality standards. The real challenge before Indian managers is to establish priorities among potential JIT techniques to achieve best possible advantage of JIT implementation in Indian industries.. With the variety of products on offer increasing with customization and evolving customer needs, it is but important that a manufacturing facility embraces the advantages of JIT in making the operations lean and flexible.
Indian Automobile Industry: India currently has approximately 40 million vehicles. . In February 2009, monthly sales of passenger cars in India exceeded 100,000 units. Current low penetration, rising prosperity and the increasing affordability of private vehicles along with importance to exports offer a healthy prospectus for the Indian automobile industry. (Source: http://www.kpmg.de/docs/Auto_survey.pdf)
Several Indian
References: 15) Shishir Bhat, (2008), “Cellular manufacturing-the heart of Lean manufacturing”, Advances in Production Engineering and Management, Vol 3 , No 4 16) B.Vijaya Ramnath,C 19) KPMG (2006), “Indian Automotive Supply Chain KPMG” 20) http://amitsinghbisht.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/maruti-udyog-limited-managing-competition-successfully-723310.html