Quantitative Analysis for Management, 13/e

6.11 Just-In-Time Inventory Control

During the past several decades, there has been a trend to make the manufacturing process more efficient. One objective is to have less in-process inventory on hand. This is known as just-in-time (JIT) inventory. With this approach, inventory arrives just in time to be used during the manufacturing process to produce subparts, assemblies, or finished goods. One technique of implementing JIT is a manual procedure called kanban. Kanban in Japanese means “card.” With a dual-card kanban system, there is a conveyance kanban, or C-kanban, and a production kanban, or P-kanban. The kanban system is very simple. Here is how it works:

With JIT, inventory arrives just before it is needed.

Four Steps of Kanban

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