INTRODUCTION
The title of article that had been chosen is “A Study on Just-in-Time Implementation in Portugal: Some Empirical Evidence”, written by Maria Rosario Mota Oliveira Alves Moreira and Rui Alberto Ferreira dos Santos Alves. This article was published in Brazilian Journal of Operation and Production Management, Volume 5, pp. 05-22 in year 2008. It describes how far the Just-in-Time system is being implemented by Portuguese manufacturing firms, as well as assessing its perception and its potential benefits by managers.
JIT philosophy was developed in Japan by Toyota Motor Company with the aims to continuously eliminate waste and improve productivity (Ansari and Modarress, 1990). The essence of JIT is elimination of waste through elimination of non-value added activities in purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, and manufacturing support activities of the manufacturing process. JIT manufacturing is a demand-pull system where products are produced when orders are received from customers and only in the quantities demanded by the customers.
JIT manufacturing is defined as a repetitive production system in which processing and movement of material and goods occurs just as they are needed, usually in small batches (Stevenson, 1996). This manufacturing system includes practices of preventive maintenance, cellular manufacturing, continuous flow, smaller lot sizes and kanban (Foster & Hongren, 1987; Fullerton & McWatters, 2002). Thus, manufacturing plants have to be reorganized so that raw materials and purchased parts are delivered to the plant right before they are entered into the production process (Che Ruhana and T.Y Keong).
Just-in-Time is a philosophy that seeks to utilize all resources in the most efficient way. It was accomplished by eliminating waste. Just-in-Time has benefits and among of them are higher quality, lower inventory levels, improved throughput times and shortened response times (Schonberger, 1982), which is same with Inman and Mehra (1993) who add that the Just-in-Time has higher advantage.
There are, however, some conditions or pre-requisites to successfully implement this management philosophy such as quick and economics setups (to allow small lot sizes) and uniform production rate (to ensure schedule stability). According to (Gother and Stamm, 1991; Zhu et all., 1994; Ahmad et all., 2004; Schuberger, 2007), other elements are a pull control system, flexible employees, preventive maintenance, supplier long-term relationships, and quality circles.
Gother and Stamm (1991) identified four basic principle of the Just-in-Time management philosophy. They are:
i. elimination of waste
ii. employee involvement
iii. supplier long-term relationship
iv. total quality control
According to the article, several studies on Just-in-Time practices and its implementation have been conducted, first in developed countries (e.g., United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada) and later in developing countries (e.g., Mexico, Egypt, Ghana, India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia). This paper presents a field study of Just-in-Time in Portugal but reviewed several studies about the implementation of the Just-in-Time system in various countries over the past 25 years, and then the descriptive survey research is reported.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The aim of the study is to find how far the Just-in-Time system is being implemented by Portuguese firms, as well as assessing its perception and its potential benefits by managers. The study present a survey research by Forza, (2002) conducted in Portugal to assess local implementation of Just-in-Time practices. The important contribution of this paper is that it adds to the empirical database of Just-in-Time practices and its implementation in Portuguese firms, allowing one to know how manufacturing managers are aware of this management philosophy and its potential implementation, so the Portuguese firms can be prepared to overcome them.
The study sent a survey questionnaire to obtain the data used in this research. The questionnaire was sent to the manufacturing or general manager of the selected firms by selecting those firms based on the number of workers and annual sales criteria. The questionnaire was developed to collect three types of information: (1) general information of the firm, including its characteristics and the industry it belongs to; (2) information that would allow an assessment of the extent to which the responding firm is using Just-in-Time; (3) information that would allow an assessment to the extent to which the respondent is familiar with the Just-in-Time system.
Kata kunci artikel:
mcDonalds a guide to the benefits of JIT, mcdonalds just in time case study, tema maulidurrasul 1433 hPages: 1 2
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