I see people recognizing reality - JIT is efficient but fragile in the face of disruption.
Seems to me the sensible thing to do would be to recognize that for what it is and try to strike the right balance in an uncertain world. Even if your concerns are strictly commercial, a couple points margin in good times is unlikely to balance a year of massively screwed up supply chains.
Even the progenitors of JIT did not advocate for zero warehousing - they advocated for not warehousing components which could be manufactured on demand.
What makes you think the right balance hasn't already been struck? It seems rational to me that a pandemic followed by a chip shortage driven in part by crypto would be extremely unlikely, and if they had two years of extra stock on hand that would almost suggest to me they were too prepared (i.e. wasting money). Like if the zombie apocalypse strikes tomorrow, you probably will be unprepared, not because you're bad at planning but because this was too unlikely to have reasonably prepared for
> What makes you think the right balance hasn't already been struck?
Because it wasn't in the company I work for, and it wasn't at many of our suppliers, and it looks like similar things happened most everywhere else.
We've made a number of changes, both to how and where we source things, to how much of what we keep in stock, and changed processes to re-evaluate suppliers and overall state-of-the-market more frequently.
I know some of our vendors have as well, both because in some cases we asked them to, and also just from talking to them.
If your firm has achieved planning perfection, congrats. I mean that sincerely. But I don't think a lot of other places have.
I see people recognizing reality - JIT is efficient but fragile in the face of disruption.
Seems to me the sensible thing to do would be to recognize that for what it is and try to strike the right balance in an uncertain world. Even if your concerns are strictly commercial, a couple points margin in good times is unlikely to balance a year of massively screwed up supply chains.