Logistics strategy

Assignment Question

Consider the question:

CAN JIT BE A TRULY UNIVERSAL OPERATIONS PHILOSOPHY?

INTRODUCTION
Today, large companies are pressed by the urgent need to increase productivity. For this reason, many of them decided to adopt alternative techniques.
The technique, goal or philosophy Just in Time management has been recently great prominence throughout the world, in view of the great need to reduce costs to the production area.
With this work, we show a fairly succinct and accurate, that philosophy can be translated into production without inventory, waste disposal, system of continuous improvement of process etc. Anyway, this system of Japanese culture (birthplace of Just in Time in the 1970s) is composed of management practices that can be applied anywhere in the world and in any company, which aims at the continuous improvement of production process.

JUST IN TIME
Just in Time (JIT) emerged in Japan in the mid-1970s, his basic idea and its development credited to Toyota Motor Company, which advocated a system of administration which could coordinate production with the specific demand of different designs and colors of vehicles with minimal delay.
The system of "pull" production from demand, producing each only necessary item, in quantities needed and when needed, became known in the West as Kanban system. This name is given to the cards used to authorise the production and movement of items throughout the production process. However, the JIT is much more than a technique or a set of production management techniques, being considered as a complete "philosophy", which includes aspects of material management, quality management, physical arrangement, product design, work organization and human resources management. (HUTCHINS, 1993)
Although there are those who say that the success of JIT management system is based on the cultural characteristics of Japanese people, more and more managers and academics have become convinced that this