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.
