The Wall Street Journal, sadly, has a long track record of not understanding Lean, as I've written about many times on my blog. There's a major flare-up at least once a year, as listed below:
2011:
2010:
2009:
2008:
2007:
2006:
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[…] Lean for the shortages. The WSJ normally has an article each year with flawed thinking about JIT (as I’ve collected here). It’s literally once a year that the WSJ trots out this sort of article, as they did in 2007 […]
The most recent 2011 WSJ bad piece on Lean/JIT:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271631993174792.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
This article is full is mis-perceptions about Lean that the business world (and the WSJ) are still trying to recover from. Back in the 1980’s, most thought that Lean was just about just-in-time materials, supply chain, inventory, and production scheduling practices – people missed the broader management system of Lean and Toyota. This broader management system is really a total business system (see lean.org or the book The Toyota Way for more modern definitions of “lean.”)
Another comment is correct that JIT was designed for local deliveries and supply chains within Japan, a small country where warehouse space was at a premium in factories. Toyota has more inventory in its supply chain when bringing parts from Japan to North America then they would for a supplier in their San Antonio plant and local business park. If companies are bringing parts across the ocean on a boat from China, you can’t do JIT. But you can still be a “lean thinking” company. It’s not all about zero inventory.
Lean and JIT has never meant to be a substitute for thinking.
If you have long supply chains, highly variable demand, or lots of risk in your supply chain, why would you assume JIT or Lean are possible? We are still recovering from an unfortunately titled book “Zero Inventories” from the 1980s. Executives apparently didn’t read that the title.
Lean is about continuous improvement and total business effectiveness. It never was all about low inventory.
These companies and this article miss the point. We can’t say “shame on Lean” but rather “shame on the companies that misapplied it” unless they companies learn and change their practices going forward. That’s a learning organization and that’s what Lean is really all about.
One other thought – people say JIT is liable to disruptions. What if Japanese companies had huge factories pull of parts sitting there? The parts might have been damaged in the earthquake and tsunami. No production system can protect you from huge catastrophes. Truly lean supply chains are more flexible and allow companies to respond faster after disasters (such as Toyota’s quick recover from previous supplier plant fires and earthquake damage in past years).
Here’a a consolidated record on how the WSJ usually gets it wrong on Lean/JIT; https://www.leanblog.org/2010/08/record-of-annual-wsj-jitlean-blunders/
[…] 2, 2011 · 0 comments Tweet On Friday, yet another Wall Street Journal article about Lean (fixating as they always do on the “Just In Time” component). The article titled “For Lean Factories, No Buffer” yet again takes an outdated 1980s […]
[…] One of the variations of my acronym L.A.M.E. is “Lean As Misguidedly Explained,” and I recently ran across two fresh instances of this (and, for once, neither is from the Wall Street Journal!). […]
[…] right part, in the right quantity, at the right time, to the right operation, customer, or process. JIT often gets confused with “low inventory,” especially in the WSJ. Actually, these two pillars are linked together, especially so in healthcare, as providing […]
[…] WSJ recognizing that Lean isn’t just about “just in time” and low inventory (see their record of mistakes). Boeing started emphasizing employee-generated ideas in Renton in the late 1990s, when the 737 […]
[…] (which is straight from Toyota). The Economist thankfully gets that right when the Wall St. Journal has so often gotten it wrong by describing Lean as just the flow component (or “just in time”). Also usually getting […]
[…] The Wall St Journal loves writing about how “Just In Time” (JIT) is a risky inventory strategy. See my past posts about how the WSJ is so often wrong on this. […]