Just-in-Time System
Most people in industry know about the just-in-time, or the stockless production, system. It was developed at Toyota in the 1950s, and over a period of time has come to become synonymous with Japanese industry. Few people, however, are aware that the idea of JIT came not from other automobile industries which Toyota studied, but from the American supermarket.
When Taiichi Ohno, the creator of this system, went on a trip to USA, he was struck by the efficiency of these supermarkets (after World War II, they had also started sprouting up in Japan in numbers). What appealed to him was that here was a system which made required items available in the right quantities, and at the right time. Applying this to the factory, he realised, would have tremendous benefits in terms of time and low inventories. Ohno studied how the supermarkets operate, and in 1953, for the first time applied this system to the Toyota machine shop in the main plant.
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