Toyota and JIT Manufacturing: The Origins of JIT

Just in Time (JIT) can be a management philosophy geared towards eliminating waste and continuously improving quality. Credit for developing JIT being a management strategy goes to Toyota. Toyota JIT manufacturing pointed in the aftermath of World War II.
Although a history of JIT traces back to Henry Ford who applied Just in Time principles to deal with inventory inside Ford Automobile Company in the early part of the 20th Century, the origins in the JIT as a management strategy traces to Taiichi Onho with the Toyota Manufacturing Company. He developed Just in Time strategy as a qbits review means of competitive advantage throughout the post World War II period in Japan.




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The post-World War II Japanese automobile industry faced a crisis of existence, and firms such as Toyota looked to benchmark their thriving American counterparts. The productivity associated with an American car worker was nine times exactly what a Japanese car worker during those times, and Taiichi Onho sought ways to reach such levels.
Two pressing challenges however prevented Toyota from adopting the American way:
To overcome those two challenges, Taiichi Onho identified waste because primary evil. The kinds of waste identified included
Taiichi Onho then sought to eliminate waste over the just-in-time philosophy, where items moved with the production system only whenever needed
Toyota JIT manufacturing strategy devoted to changing factory layout to reduce transporting items backwards and forwards to different machines and instead arranging machines to be sure the items flow smoothly in one machine to a different.
To control the flow of items inside the new environment, Toyota introduced kanban, or facts about what to do that controlled all movements throughout the factory.
The two types of kanban in Toyota are:
A part disappearing from an assembly station was the sign to create or order a fresh part.
Toyota started work on the Just in Time system in 1952, and established kanbans throughout the organization by 1962.

The origin of kanban effected precise specifications of item quantities, leaving no room for defects. The success of this initiative therefore is determined by no defective components entering the assembly line. To ensure this, Toyota introduced autonomation, or automating the fabrication system and reducing human intervention only on detection of defects. The system detects defect automatically and will not proceed until human intervention repair.
The implementation of autonomation meant stoppage in the entire production line, and in the first week, line stops occurred almost hourly. It took few months for line stops to fall to few-a-week and have no economic impact.
A major initiative in the Just in Time was re-engineering machines and operations to reduce the setup time required before processing of a whole new item. Toyota JIT manufacturing identified changing stamping dies used for body parts since the critical retooling operation.
The traditional re-tooling way entailed installing die-tools individually, and adjustment personally, with crowbars and wrenches. Installing large die sets took a couple of days, during which time the development line remained shut.
Toyota launched "The Single Minute Exchange of Die" (SMED) that substituted measurements for adjustments, governing the quality of stampings by way of a written recipe. This reduced the die change times dramatically to about a half an hour, and facilitated economic lot sizes of even one vehicle,
The major challenges faced by Toyota in implementing JIT included
The implementation of JIT met with remarkable success at Toyota. The sale of in-process inventory generated surplus cash, response time fell to about each day, product quality increased improving customer satisfaction, and vehicles designed to order eliminating the risk of vehicles remaining unsold, increasing the company's return on equity.
The success of Just in Time made Toyota the envy in the industrialized world. Several organizations have emulated Toyota's Just in Time Strategy. The next landmark in JIT history happens when it spread to America through the late 1970's and early 1980's. Today, many organizations like Hewlett Packard, Dell, McDonalds, among others owe their success for the Just in Time Management strategy.
Image Credit: danielctw, flickr.com