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Over the past two decades the “Just‐in‐Time” (JIT) manufacturing philosophy has increasingly influenced operation and production systems of many Western manufacturing companies. As a consequence, many other manufacturers are now currently considering adopting this technique. A valuable help in the consideration of the implementation of JIT is the accumulated experience of those companies which have already successfully implemented JIT. Describes the experience of a sample of firms in Europe who were respondents to a specially designed questionnaire which was sent out as part of a major study.

In competitive world markets most manufacturing companies have learned that survival is based on a commitment towards continual process, and that product improvement competes with high quality of product and low price. In today′s rapidly changing marketplace a company must deliver low cost together with high quality and reliability of product to ensure retaining adequate market share. The necessary improvements can be achieved as have already been determined first by a large number of Japanese companies and later by US and European companies with implementation of suitable JIT systems. A number of articles have been written, which attempt to identify and discuss the critical variable essential for successful JIT implementation. To date little have reported on quantitative tangible and intangible benefits of JIT. Discusses tangible and intangible benefits which European companies have derived from JIT.

It is not sufficient just to make the decision to implement just‐in‐time (JIT) and then let events run their course. It is important also to have in place an auditing procedure that can monitor that JIT is being implemented efficiently and correctly. These procedures should ideally monitor performance and ensure that potential benefits are being derived. Items in the present checklist are based on both entensive examination of JIT literature, in order to identify major factors, and three years′ study of JIT implementation. The procedure monitors 77 items, divided into five groups, covering all aspects of manufacturing organization.

The objective of this paper is to assess the use of performance measurement systems in firms implementing just‐in‐time (JIT). A mail questionnaire, with a response rate of 85 percent, was sent to larger New Zealand manufacturing companies. A total of 36 percent of the sample of companies had implemented a JIT programme. JIT firms were found to use non‐financial performance indicators to a greater extent than non‐JIT firms. For JIT firms there was a significant positive correlation between use of non‐financial performance indicators and organisation performance. A significant positive correlation was also found between the use of non‐financial performance indicators and organisation performance for all firms in the survey. Results from this study suggest that there are benefits in adapting the accounting performance measurement system to support and enhance JIT implementation. The study indicates potential benefits from the use of non‐financial performance measures for both JIT and non‐JIT firms.

Just‐in‐time (JIT) systems were originally designed for deterministic production environments such as constant processing times and smooth and stable demand. However, once implemented, JIT is fraught with numerous types of uncertainties, including variations in processing time and demand, planned interruptions such as preventive maintenance and unplanned interruptions such as equipment failure. These uncertainties lead to lowered production throughput, decreased machine utilization, increased order completion time and greater backlogs and overtime requirements. In this paper, we introduce a newly developed system, which we refer to as the flexible kanban system (FKS), to cope with uncertainties and planned/unplanned interruptions. We demonstrate the superiority of the new system by considering four case examples covering various uncertainties, conducting numerous studies and comparing the overall performances of the FKS with that of the traditional JIT system. In all the cases considered, the performance of the FKS was, indeed, superior to that of the traditional JIT system.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on empirical research in lean manufacturing (LM). It provides a critical assessment of empirical research methodology of 178 research articles published from 1990 to 2009.

The article reviewed a set of 178 empirical research articles in LM research with respect to empirical research design and its related facets. The 236 empirical research articles which are published in 70 journals during 1990-2009 are collected from four major management science publishers, namely, Emerald Online, Science Direct, Springer Link and Taylor & Francis. In total 178 research articles published in 24 journals are selected for critical review of empirical research methodology in LM. The approach for the critical review of 178 empirical research articles in LM is based on empirical research approach given by Flynn et al. (1990). The critical review discusses the current status of empirical research in LM and future directions.

It is concluded from the analysis of the results that: the number of empirical research articles in LM is increasing at a faster pace than ever before; theory building and theory verification articles are equally advanced; the researchers have also unexplored various aspects of empirical research such as importance of triangulation of data, alternate research designs other than survey and case studies; contextual focus is mostly on the manufacturing industry; more focus required on other aspects of empirical research such as collecting the samples from developing and undeveloped countries, larger sample size, longitudinal data collection methods. Finally, it concludes that there is a need of LM frameworks, which gives the stepwise process to remove all kinds of wastes from any organization.

To the knowledge of the authors, it is the first of its kind attempt to critically review the empirical research articles in LM. The review analysis entirely focussed on descriptive statistics of empirical research in LM. The sample size is one of the unique features of this research as the number of shortlisted articles is 178 in 24 journals published over a time span of 20 years (1990-2009).

Recent literature indicates there has been an absence of top management involvement in the development of customer service policies and integration of these policies into the organizational decision making process. This paper discusses the importance of integrating customer service activities into the decision making process of today’s manufacturing organizations and thus enhancing development of an organization’s competitive advantage. Just‐in‐time systems and new technologies (product, process and information) provide the mechanisms for integration of the various activities across the supply chain. Porter’s value system concept is presented as the framework for integrating a firm’s activities within the supply chain and improving their performance.

As the COVID-19 epidemic ravages the world in the fourth industrial revolution era, the manufacturing sector faces its worst situation in a century. Lean philosophy, renowned as a “warrior philosophy,” can be an able rescuer to these industries. This study aims to identify the hurdles to lean strategy implementation and conduct an analysis to provide cognizance to policymakers, practitioners and decision-makers.

This study aims to identify the obstacles that obstruct lean implementation into seven primary barriers/components, with the fuzzy DEMATEL approach being used to evaluate the critical factors as well as the cause and effect factors among them. Expert opinions are sought to obtain the relevant data for evaluation purposes.

The results reveal that a firm should focus on firm cultural conflict scenario, resources–responses incapability, improve on suppliers’ attitude and execute a proper planning and logistics equation to alleviate the hindrances of implementing lean. As these causal factors influence the effect factors, namely, top management vision, management–employee relationship and human resource building, focusing on them automatically improves the effect factors; thus, the surge to overcome resistance to lean implementation is alleviated.

This research aids in identifying and analyzing lean implementation issues in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. The observations, results and insights drawn can act as a guiding force to rupture the resistance envelope covering the domain of lean implementation and possibly reinstating industries to survive and excel in the business post-COVID era.

This research introduces barriers to lean implementation in a unique way, as it articulates all sections of an industry and group the barriers based on the classification. It further prioritizes the barriers for their importance in the Indian industrial scenario. This would help the industry professionals and managers access the barriers and generate insight on how and where to start implementing lean.

Examines Just‐in‐Time (JIT) from its evolution as a Japanese concept through to a review of its philosophy and implementation. Cites several techniques of implementation. Includes a review of the early work of various researchers and practitioners. Concludes that JIT is a very effective manufacturing philosophy which is universal in nature encompassing all aspects of manufacturing. Suggests a few deficiencies in current literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceived impact of just‐in‐time (JIT) implementation on operations performance, identify the relationship between elements of JIT (integrated and individual) and performance metrics, and based on the results, present some helpful suggests for improving JIT implementation in manufacturing industry.

Framework and hypotheses based on literature review were first constructed, then a questionnaire was developed to collect data from mainland China; in total, 224 information responses were obtained, then statistical analysis was carried out to test the hypotheses. Based on the data analysis results, conclusion and managerial insight were summarized.

Results show that, no matter what kind of industry or scale of sale of the firm, implementation of an aggregate bundle of JIT elements can improve production operations performance. However, for individual elements of JIT, their impacts are different; some basic elements of JIT like 5S, multiple‐skill employee and JIT purchasing can play a more remarkable role than other elements.

The conclusions of this paper can benefit firms in improving implementation of JIT in practice, especially for those firms in developing countries.

Although a number of studies on JIT implementation have been reported in developed countries, little attention has been paid to the status of Chinese firms; this paper has value for examining the practice of JIT in China and reference value for other developing countries’ firms.