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Mehra and Inman [11] have defined JIT as "a vendor strategy that yields higher levels of productivity and quality by minirnising vendor lot sizes and their lead times through the use of sole sourcing and quality certification of suppliers." As a consequence, JIT purchasing might be defined as the particular form of managing the purchasing function in JIT environments. The most important aspects of the JIT purchasing concept focus on new ways of dealing with suppliers and a clear-cut recognition of the appropriate purchasing role in the development of corporate strategy.
Characteristic JIT purchasing practices can be traced back to both a logistic /operational dimension and an organizational /relational dimension (Benito and Spring 2000). The latter encompasses activities that affect the flow of incoming materials and production planning.
Among the essential elements of the logistic/ operational dimension of JIT purchasing, frequent and small delivery batches and reduced inventory must be considered. That is, JIT purchasing is an extension of the "pull" logic of kanban to suppliers. A key objective of JIT purchasing is to synchronize delivery shipments with production planning so that each component arrives at the production line just at the moment of being processed or assembled. That implies specification of exact delivery times or tight delivery time windows to suppliers.
Delivery frequency is different for each supplier according to the characteristics of the products. To differentiate among products, techniques such as ABC pareto-type analysis are frequently used [1, 10]. For suppliers, implementation of JIT production systems has been seen as a way of countering the new delivery without absorbing stocks [9]. In this way, the whole supply chain will be working under JIT criteria and all the potential benefits of this manufacturing philosophy can be fully exploited.
On the basis of these premises, supplier-customer relationships should be built on a high degree of mutual trust, information sharing, and communication. When entering a long-term relationship, the buyer will make an effort to select suppliers that have consistently exhibited high levels of quality and delivery reliability [4, 13]. Thus, the organizational/ relational aspects of the JIT purchasing system comprise the practices that contribute to create, maintain, and nurture suppliercustomer cooperation; empower the supplier and develop its distinctive capabilities; and ensure quality and reliability.
Implementation...