Title: The essence of just-in-time
Description: Toyota has been recognized as an outstanding manufacturer for more than a decade. The Toyota Production System - Toyota's way of managing its manufacturing organizations - has been credited for Toyota's outstanding performance. Customer-pacedproduction, immediate delivery, zero-inventory, pull systems, kanban cards, and and on cords are among the characteristic features and tools that have been linked individually and collectively to Just-in-Time, a practice of TPS that has received great attention. This paper uses two cases to illustrate the principles that underlie those features and tools particularly related to Just-in-Time. This is accomplished by first focusing on how a particular Toyota supplier manages the flow of goods, services, and information to produce made-to-order mattresses in high volume and high variety and then showing how a principle based approach can be used to design a supply chain. These principles which we call "Rules-in-Use" are used to design, test-in-use, and improve the work-activities, connections among activities, and pathways of connected activities by which intermediate and final goods, services,and information are produced and delivered. Having these Rules-in-Use articulated explicitly and simply makes it far easier to anticipate when and how the Toyota Production System and its associated practices can be applied effectively for managing systems of various types.