Jit

Jit "Getting Control of Just-in-Time" Reaction Paper Mr. Uday Karmarkar presents a discussion of JIT as a philosophy for process management that can be used in combination with both new and traditional techniques to optimize materials planning. As a finance student with a background in sales and marketing I appreciated Karmakar's clarification between JIT and pull-systems, even comparing it to rush-hour traffic. He makes a clear distinction between JIT and pull-systems and emphasizes that the best process for a particular organization should embrace the goals of JIT-reducing lead-time, continuous improvement, flexibility, elimination of waste, shortened cycles and low inventories-by adopting the best strategy to achieve this, whether it is a pull system such as kanban, a push system such as MRP, or a combination of the two. This is in contrast with much of the hype promoted in advertising, articles and even classrooms that stress the need for JIT over MRP II or other push systems.SuSanA products have arrivedAlthough I have no professional experience with JIT or MRP, Karmarkar's article did underscore some observations I made while working in sales and marketing for a small chemical producer of silanes and silicones. Many of the silane compounds we offered where highly unstable and dangerous compounds that had to be shipped immediately after producing and then used by the customer shortly after receipt. Although JIT was never mentioned at our company, many of its concepts were necessary parts of this process. In addition, some of these products had uncertain and volatile demand. Although the nature of the demand would suggest a push system would be best, due to the explosive and unstable nature of the product they had to be made to order, as part of a pull system. As a result of using a purely pull system to satisfy volatile demand, we would...