We invented Just in time and lean manufacture W2G. That's the point.
It was meant to cut o/heads by not having millions of pounds worth of stock, lying about doing nothing.
However there is a point where it become counter productive because as youR manufacturing costs rise, it becomes more expensive to have people stood doing nothing, therefore it's an ongoing equasion. Mostly today they see it as a one time fix.
I have actually seen board reports recently, where the finance director is crowing that he saved 55K in a month through JIT and the manuf director, listing a downtime cost of over 70K.!!!
How the MD's keep their job in these situations is beyond me. When I was department head at GEC in the late 80's, we were MD of our section and it was our job to see that those situations didn't happen if one had developed, I would have been looking for a new job.
