I've been a huge Deming fan since the early 1990's, but I have a challenge here. My experience contradicts the idea that just-in-time doesn't lead to quality. What I've seen is that reducing inventory levels acts to expose inefficiencies and waste. When you address these you also improve quality.
As someone that promotes Theory of Constraint (TOC) management in terms of production and other areas. I find that the natural consequence of TOC management results in inventory reduction and waste it also encourages people to not work as hard as they can (Local Optima). With this extra capacity more of a focus can be put on quality management, Innovation and people development. A combination of this and Insight Selling really starts to impact on business development.
I've seen the opposite. Constant delays and late shipments because every second or third manufacturing process was delayed due to either raw materials not being in on time or any delay hiccup in manufacturing or conformance testing leads to a blown schedule (and pressure to meet the schedule mitigated the completeness and accuracy of conformance testing in that shop). But there were many ways the people running that place just didn't get it. I think the best example was that not only were annual reviews a big and serious thing there, but their implementation was just ridiculous. For instance, QC lab staff's performance rating was 50% based on the first time pass rate. So the result was some tests skips, many tests not performed correctly, many results fabricated.
I've been a huge Deming fan since the early 1990's, but I have a challenge here. My experience contradicts the idea that just-in-time doesn't lead to quality. What I've seen is that reducing inventory levels acts to expose inefficiencies and waste. When you address these you also improve quality.
+Rob Honeycutt JIT alone will not make quality, it will aid it.
As someone that promotes Theory of Constraint (TOC) management in terms of production and other areas. I find that the natural consequence of TOC management results in inventory reduction and waste it also encourages people to not work as hard as they can (Local Optima). With this extra capacity more of a focus can be put on quality management, Innovation and people development.
A combination of this and Insight Selling really starts to impact on business development.
It's been a while since you posted this, but I'm curious if you ever saw JIT instituted in isolation without any other changes to the system.
I've seen the opposite. Constant delays and late shipments because every second or third manufacturing process was delayed due to either raw materials not being in on time or any delay hiccup in manufacturing or conformance testing leads to a blown schedule (and pressure to meet the schedule mitigated the completeness and accuracy of conformance testing in that shop). But there were many ways the people running that place just didn't get it. I think the best example was that not only were annual reviews a big and serious thing there, but their implementation was just ridiculous. For instance, QC lab staff's performance rating was 50% based on the first time pass rate. So the result was some tests skips, many tests not performed correctly, many results fabricated.
Inventory is considered waste in TPS