A motorcycle manufacturer is currently using a conventional production and inventory management system. Recently work-in-process inventory has been piling up at two workstations along the production line. These machines have limited capacity and are bottlenecks. Inventory is backing up all the way back to the stockroom so that you are out of warehouse space and have a hard time unloading trucks from your suppliers. The company is unsure what is causing the issue even without placing much emphasis on sales forecasting they have had significant sales growth in recent years. In the past they have just made production schedule adjustments as needed to meet unexpected demand from arriving customer orders. To eliminate this problem, and possibly somewhat due to the fact that the president and founders daughter has just returned to the company after completing her MBA at Edgewood, management is discussing the possibility of implementing just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing.

1. Is that the best solution to this issue for this company at this time, why or why not?

2. What are some fundamental requirements for successful implementation of just-in-time?

3. What is the role of suppliers in successful implementation of JIT and how might you provide incentives for them to work with you? This is of course after fixing their sales forecasting problems.