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Steps in Cycle of Continuous Improvement for JIT Inventory

1. Design: The JIT process begins with a review of the essential manufacturing building blocks: product design, process design, personnel and manufacturing planning. Then plans are put into place to eliminate disruption, minimize waste and build a flexible system.

2. Manage: A Total Quality Management (TQM) review ensures there is continuous improvement throughout the process. A management review defines workers’ roles and responsibilities, defines and measures statistical quality control, stabilizes schedules, and checks out load and capacity schedules and levels.

3. Pull: Educate the team on production and withdrawal methods using signaling methods like Kanban. Review lot size policies and reduce lot sizes.

4. Establish: Vendor relationships are vital to the success of JIT. Review vendor lists. Settle on preferred suppliers, negotiate contracts, discuss lead times, delivery expectations and usage metrics and measures. Learn how to make the most of them in the supply chain.

5. Fine-tune: Determine inventory needs, policies, controls and reduce inventory movements.

6. Build: Inform your team about the skills and capabilities it needs to complete its work and conduct team education and empowerment sessions to educate them.

7. Refine: Reduce the number of parts and steps in production by refining, standardizing and reviewing the entire process.

8. Review: Define and implement quality measures and metrics and conduct a root cause analysis of any problems. Emphasize improvements and track trends to improve every aspect of JIT.