World-class performance requires a company strategy that will encompass both quality and productivity improvements that don't stop until perfection is reached or at least there is a pursuit in the direction of excellence benchmarking “Best in Class”. As this can be achieved when people work together, it can't be automated or programmed. It is a continuous process that feeds on the synergism of human teamwork focused on satisfying all of the pie that encompasses customer’s price, quality, delivery and service want.
To a large number of misinformed professionals today, JIT is a quick delivery system thriving on an unsuspecting supply base or an inventory management system.
Quality is promoted under various TQM banners, which completely ignores productivity concerns. The goodness of quality will not win customers at noncompetitive prices. Team building has been promoted as a way to create a mystical problem solving, money-saving force that can operate in a near vacuum. (Such programs usually die in a few years/months for lack of leadership from disappointed/not-interested leaders in the management chain.) Many of the JIT productivity elements, like group technology cells, setup reduction and pull system, have been implemented in isolation of one another, resulting in partially effective islands of change. In fact, it's been fouled up so completely that I've started calling the original strategy REAL JIT to differentiate it from the smorgasbord that's out there today. It’s a real SNAFU for all present proponents of the concept. One needs to see what’s boiling in the pot to really comprehend the status of JIT.
Whatever you call it the most important thing to remember is that the winning process is like a good recipe. All of the proper ingredients in the right proportions, properly blended and nurtured in the right environment are necessary. If you decide to omit something that doesn't appeal to you or that you're afraid to try (Our volumes are much too low to try mixed-model scheduling.), then you won't get what you expected. But, whose fault is that?
The REAL JIT Recipe
First, you need a strategic envelope that will guide all of the tactical decisions that will be necessary as you move to world-class performance. That strategy must simultaneously encompass the essence of customer satisfaction: best quality, lowest prices, fastest delivery and regal service. While tactical elements can be implemented sequentially, the biggest mistake most companies make is failure to adopt the total strategy up front. That's why I use a coin to describe the JIT Strategy. It has two facets, the productivity and quality sides, but the two are part of the same whole and cannot be separated.
Productivity Principles
The productivity strategy requires that we abandon the traditional approach of trying to out-guess the customer to compensate for a slow manufacturing process and replace it with an immediate response, build-to-order process. To do that, we have to eliminate every wasteful, time-consuming practice and investment in the business that doesn't add value for the customer to get truly lean and mean. The ultimate goal is to produce one-at-a-time, in any flavor with near-zero lead-time. Obviously, this cannot be achieved in one step, so the guiding principle for this strategy is one of continuous improvement, which, in turn, can only be accomplished by the nurturing of all the human brainpower in the company. These improvements will lead to the elimination of all the contingency investments we've made, just in case something might go wrong. Finally, because so much of our traditional approach to business has been short-term oriented (as demonstrated by the instant-return and break-through schools of wishful thinking), we must recognize that this is a major cultural change, which can only be achieved as part of an evolutionary, long-term strategy.
