Santosh Karkhanis

ELEMENTS OF JIT PRODUCTION
An overview of JIT production can be gained by understanding the following outline of key elements of JIT strategy.
1. Policies: to provide direction, and to indicate to the work for that management is concerned and involved; cover a wide range of subjects: customer service, elimination of waste, continual improvements, lead time reduction.
2. The people strategy: Positive attitude towards workforce; treating people as company’s valuable asset; Employment as a long term decision; employee involvement, flexibility, small-group improvement activities (SGIA); company unions.
3. The Product Strategy: The design 'quality; integration of product design with manufacturing and-vendor capabilities; role of CAD/CAM configuration control and standardization, grouping products; by families for production through group technology.
4. The plant and equipment strategy: Concepts of focused factories, group layouts, quick conveyance means such as belt conveyor, chute, fork lift; productive maintenance.
5. The process Strategy: Shojinka (flexibility of process in meeting demand)'through GT layout, multifunction work force and job rotation; autonomation (autonomous control of defects), statistical control of defects, set up time reduction, small lot production; achieving balanced production add uniform plant loads through standard operations and mixed model assembly and fabrication.
6. The Planning Strategy: The three month horizon, production plan leveling, Final assembly scheduling (daily buckets) and sequencing.
7. The production scheduling strategy: The Kanbansystem, the role of kanban in achieving improvement activities; produce to exact demand; no contingencies) whirling round tour system.
8. The purchasing strategy: The long-term supplier relations, the subcontractor networks; the transport innovations.