In college I learned about the Just-in-Time supply chain model in regards to Toyota and how it was far superior to the massive build up of inventory that was standard in the early days of Ford. After the crisis in Japan earlier this year I was going to make a blog post about how when a chain is so efficient to the point that there is no inventory buildup and then a natural disaster hits your operations immediately stop. I held off on making a post about it because I felt that it might have been out of the scope of this blog but with the recent tornado in Missouri in addition to someone making a similar argument in Transport Topics, I decided to briefly bring up the issue.
In Transport Topics May 23, 2011 issue there is an editorial “Rethink the ‘Just-in-Time’ Delivery System” by Julian Keeling which talks about the same idea but he noted a system I never heard of called “Just-in-Case” (JIC). JIC is basically the idea of consolidating shipments and doing them in advance to avoid the potential immediate stop in productions in case of any unexpected delays but it requires inventory to be built up which goes against the idea behind JIT system. The benefits of JIC are that it puts less strain on the supply chain because they will have more room to deal with problems as they come.
At Great Western Transportation we always recommend shipping important loads out a few days early to compensate for any unforeseen circumstances so that productions will not be held up. Please visit our Truckload Trucking and LTL Trucking pages to learn about the options available to you when deciding to ship your product. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to call us at 1-800-972-8484.
