JIT also works really well when all your major manufacturing centers are an average 3-4 hour drive from each other. 6-8 at the furthest maybe.
JIT breaks down over global distances because “in time” and “instant” mean very different things even when moving nearly at the speed of sound. Even if no one embargoed anyone, you can’t beat the laws of physics.
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JIT made sense for Toyota and they took steps to ensure their suppliers were beholden to them (that is they shipped whenever Toyota needed it).
Did that still hold true during the pandemic? I mean if you can't get stuff on the ships (huge part of the chain) they can't go out. It's not always a choice for suppliers as we saw.
Toyota had identified the strategic risk of chip supply some years earlier, and made sure they had access to large buffers of them, reducing the impact.
JIT doesn't make sense for global supply chains when the suppliers i.e. China or Russia government can impose embargoes at will with little warning.