Giorgio Maggiali was becoming increasingly frustrated. As director of logistics for the world's largest pasta producer, Barilla SpA (Societa per Aziont translates as "Society for Stockholders" and is interpreted as "Inc."), Maggiali was acutely aware of the growing burden that demand fluctuations imposed on the company's manufacturing and distribution system. Since his appointment in 1988 as Director of Logistics, he had been trying to make headway on an innovative idea proposed by Brando Vitali, who had served as Barilla's director of logistics before Maggiali. T he idea, which Vitali called just-in-time distribution (JIT D), was modeled after the popular "just-in-time" manufacturing concept. In essence, Vitali proposed that, rather than follow the traditional practice of delivering product to Barilla's distributors on the basis of whatever orders those distributors placed with the company, Barilla's own logistics organization would instead specify the "appropriate" delivery quantitiesthose that would more effectively meet the end consumer's needs yet also would distribute the workload on Barilla's manufacturing and logistics systems more evenly. For two years Maggiali, a strong supporter of Vitali's