Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Wyndham
JIT (Just in Time) manufacturing....very very few...my guess is nearly none.
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JIT isn't a cost reduction measure so much as a push the costs on someone else measure. There is of course inventory being warehoused and they=suppliers. They are under contract to maintain a level of inventory readily available to production but the numbers are under NDA. Normally people in the industry can make a pretty good guess.
Container boats make milk runs nowadays, sometimes stopping for days to wait for their turn at the terminal or simply for more cans to increase their profit. Bad weather can slow them down for hours, days, or even a week or more on long trips such as China to LA. Once the goods do reach port customs is another variable. That's before you even start the rail, trucking, and warehouse shell game that begins when the goods reach these shores.
I'm pretty sure they have some days of inventory on the ground here, it's how its done because it's necessary to account for the variables in transport. I wouldn't expect it to be too much because production parts or other consumable items are usually warehoused in facilities that are just large enough to carry them through the variables of transport with the transport itself being part of the calculated storage needs of the product.