Just-in-time (JIT) is a management philosophy that focuses on executing tasks as and when required, eliminating the need of maintaining an inventory. The tasks could be anything, ranging from acquiring and supply of raw materials to processing and shipment. The basic concept involved is reduction of wastes at every step. The waste could be in the form of time machine-setup time, idle time, transportation time, product and raw materials. To be able to execute tasks just in time, the raw materials, assembly components and the machine need to be on-hand. Stock-piling increases costs and, in many cases, has been found to make the system on the following areas:

1. Worker idle time.
2. Intra-factory transportation time.
3. Work-in-process time.
4. Inventory.
5. Defective batch.

JIT is a management technique that focuses on executing tasks as and when required, eliminating the need of maintaining an inventory. The task could be anything, ranging from acquiring and supply of raw materials to processing and shipment. JIT is the philosophy of manufacturing based on planned elimination of all waste and on continuous improvement of productivity.

JIT, at a micro level, aims at the reduction of inventory. Lowering inventory levels is seen to be as important as shedding extra flab. JIT lies in the heart of lean manufacturing. Often, companies have been able to cut costs ranging from 25% to 30%, with the implementation of JIT. It requires effective measures at every step of the manufacturing process, right from the ordering of supplies from vendors to quality testing of the finished product.

A startup might not have a vast network of suppliers or distributors that an es¬tablished player possesses. Hence, the former would be required to hen-peck and build a network with the capacity of conforming to a JIT climate. For an established player, it might just be a matter of acclimatization. Justin-time (JIT) as a philosophy is good in most environments, including India. Its core philosophy is identifying and eliminating waste and continuous improvement. This is important in a country like ours where resources are scarce. There are auto component companies in India that have excelled in implementing the JIT concept. Inventory management using JIT has been used by many companies in the inbound (supply side) part of the supply chain. The JIT concept, however, does not work well when there is a high degree of uncertainty in the system. Therefore in certain industries such as fashion apparel, implementing JIT might be difficult and challenging.

It is not easy to implement JIT in a situation where you need to manage inventory in a short duration with a lot of uncertainty in the environment. I believe a push system of inventory management would be more appropriate, especially in the initial phases of disaster planning. JIT can definitely be used in financial services especially when financial services are using IT extensively to interact with customers.

USE OF SOFTWARE FOR JIT
SHADOW, a software tool recently unveiled by Intelligent Business Systems (IBS), is one such inventory planning mechanism based on JIT. JIT has been used successfully, to some extent, in logistics, services and even recruitment and staffing on a global scale. SHADOW is a powerful inventory management and control system from Intelligent Business Systems, providing efficient and secure control and maintenance of inventory in an organization.