JUST IN TIME is NOT the Problem!!!

Stop Blaming Just-In-Time: You’re the Problem and Here’s Why

Jason keeps hearing people over and over and over blaming just-in-time deliveries for a supply chain system and an economy of scarcity right now because of COVID-19 that’s actually gone into a spiral because of overproduction and because of batching and because of non-lean behaviors. He’s tired of hearing about it and he’s going to do a podcast right now.

But first, a Norwegian professional, a lean expert and owner on the owner side, sent him something he really appreciates. It’s called the Seven Conditions for a Sound Activity. All seven conditions must be fulfilled before starting in a new control area. This ensures the most efficient start of any activity. This is going in the lean Takt book called Takt Planning and Integrated Control.

Here are the seven conditions:

• Prior activities are completely finished and have the required quality. The next activity entering an area first verifies the readiness together with site management and the activity exiting the area.
• Construction design and information: drawings, foundations, BIM models, and other required information is available. It safeguards quality, health, and safety. Construction design is at the right level of development.
• Materials and components are of the right quantity and amount at the right place at the right time. Workers have checked that materials and components fulfill requested descriptions.
• Workers have the right knowledge and capacity. They have fully understood the tasks to be performed. Necessary changes have been considered in advance.
• Equipment needed to perform the task is available. Equipment is appropriate, safe, and tested. Protection gear is available and cleaning equipment is easily available.
• Workspace and safety: ensure workspace and area around are tidy and prepared. Safe job analysis or job hazard analysis or pretask plans have been huddled and implemented.
• External conditions: approvals and permissions are given. This includes measures to counteract weather conditions.

Jason really loves this. They’re going to put this in the next version of their Takt book. If you have concepts that relate to Takt, flow, pull, lean that you feel like should be in the third revision of their Takt book, please send it their way. Those are the seven conditions of a sound activity. Jason figured he would put this in as a preface because it heads into the just-in-time deliveries portion of the podcast really nicely.

The Root Cause: You’re Freaking Out and Making It Worse

Jason is excited about the need for the industry to become truly lean. He kind of thinks that this whole supply chain crisis and our economy of scarcity is a good thing. If you think about it, Japan didn’t go through much different of a circumstance. It was probably worse than what we’re going through right now. The difference is how they responded versus how we’re responding.

They have a respect for people and for resources and they’ve created stability and flow. And we’re just freaking out. We’re like “Oh, COVID-19. Let’s all freak out and run screaming naked into the woods.” Jason is excited about the need for the industry to become truly lean because now we’re being forced to. Unless we make it worse.

Let’s get into the conflict. You are blaming just-in-time falsely. You are the problem. You need to stop. Let Jason tell you a quick story. Everywhere he goes now somebody’s like “Oh Jason, you’re teaching us about just-in-time deliveries or teaching us about flow, but man, this just-in-time thing is crap. I can’t get anything.” Let Jason call BS or bullshit on that. That’s not the problem.

The problem is we’re in a worldwide pandemic and people are at home and we’ve interrupted the flow of materials and supply throughout the world. Our supply chains have gone into chaos. Now by going home and realizing that socialist governments will simply pay people to not do anything and to be too reserved about being out and about and serving the world with their services, they’re staying home. Also people are quitting their jobs in droves. There are a lot of people that are still on unemployment and there are a lot of people that are still not working intentionally, even though they could.

That’s mostly the problem. We have a resource problem. We have a manpower problem. We have a worker shortage. Root caused in a pandemic, a disease, and social systems that are encouraging people to stay home. That’s the root cause. Now we are making it worse and Jason will tell you why.

What Just-In-Time Actually Means

First of all, let’s talk about what just-in-time is. Jason’s got the book open here. This is Lean by Nicolas Modig. The first principle in flow and flow efficiency is just-in-time and it’s about creating flow. Imagine a football match. Flow is when the team passes the ball from one end of the pitch to the other and finally kicks the ball into the opponent’s goal. The ball is moving all the time. All the players help to find the perfect path for the ball. The ball flows across the pitch and into the goal.

In principle, scoring a goal in football is the same as delivering exactly what the customer wants when the customer wants it and in the quantity that the customer wants. Customer service is about scoring a goal. Then you tie in the Jidoka principle. Jidoka is the other side of the same coin. It complements just-in-time. Jidoka is a somewhat abstract principle. But let Jason ask a question that will hopefully help you grasp it: what underlying conditions must exist in order for a football team to score a lot of goals?

First of all, you have to see the pitch, the ball, and the goal. See all players on the pitch. See the score. See how much playing time is left. Hear the whistle. Hear their team members and the crowd. Can every player see and hear and be aware of everything that is happening all the time based on this clear picture so that they can make decisions about how together they can score a goal? So really just-in-time is about flow.

Jason looked it up and there are a lot of different definitions of just-in-time, but the basics are Takt time, flow production, and pull systems in that order. So when people are bad-mouthing just-in-time, you’re bad-mouthing flow.

Just-In-Time Is Not “Order It When You Need It Right Now”

Let’s talk about just-in-time as it relates to just materials. As just-in-time relates to materials, it’s taking the required on job date according to your Takt time, the buffer that should be ahead of it. And this is what everybody forgets. The buffer is the amount of materials that you are storing ahead of the job or on the job within a certain time range so that workers are not waiting on materials but so that you don’t have too much materials on site to where you’re tripping over them and causing the eight wastes or the seven wastes.

Once you have that buffer, it’s the management and the checking in on the supply chain ahead of that buffer. There are certain points of release that you have to check on. Making sure that you as a project team are using your procurement tracking methods, your procurement log, to ensure the success of those points of release. And that you’re utilizing supermarkets, which means you’re able to bring in materials into supermarkets, a stage location outside of the work, where you’re able to pull from those supermarkets, pull from those inventory buffers at the right time at the right quantities to supply work.

Some people in the industry falsely think just-in-time is you order something and you deliver it to where it arrives on the job site just right when you need it. Hell no, that’s not what just-in-time means. Just-in-time means what’s the required on job date? What is the current buffer that the industry, the market, the supply chains necessitate? What are the supply chain points of release and are we using supermarkets?

Everybody right now that’s complaining about just-in-time deliveries, they’re not doing any of these things. They don’t have a Takt plan to know when the crap is required on the job. They haven’t planned and researched the proper buffers per the current market. They haven’t checked on the supply chain because only 5% of projects that Jason visits anywhere in the world have a procurement log with the right points of release that people are checking on weekly and daily. And hardly anybody’s using supermarkets.

Here’s Jason’s point. We have people complaining about the supply chain and they’re like “Oh my gosh, COVID. Oh my gosh, you can’t get materials. Oh my gosh.” And they don’t have a Takt plan and they don’t have a procurement log. What the hell? Most of this stuff is an unforced error versus a forced error. Most of this stuff is just our stupidity on projects versus an industry condition.

You’re Actually Blaming Batching and Overproduction

Now to make that even worse, why is everybody blaming just-in-time? It’s because they don’t understand it and they’re actually blaming just-in-time for overproduction and batching. When people go out and they’re like “I’m going to order everything right now and I’m going to put it on the job site and I’m going to store it,” that’s batching and that’s overproduction and you’re slowing down the entire production system throughout the world because you’re freaking out and you’re reacting.

Can we prevent this? Jason doesn’t know. Everybody’s in the point of freaking out right now. There are so many dishonest people out there. Maybe we couldn’t have avoided this. But even if we couldn’t have avoided this, Jason wants to tell you exactly why it’s happening.

Why is everybody blaming just-in-time? It’s because they don’t understand it. Actually it’s batching and it’s overproduction that is to blame for this spiral into chaos that we have right now in addition to the pandemic, this disease, our inability as national world governments to respond to this disease, social systems like socialism that are incentivizing people to stay home and receive a check for doing nothing, and workers that won’t come back to work and support an economy in a capitalistic sense where people are incentivized through survival and incentive to actually go out and do work and do their part. We’re being too overly cautious with a disease that is very serious that does kill people. However, we have to keep a world economy going or else more unintended consequences are going to happen.

You take all that and then you add people overproducing and batching. Now we have a worse system. You’re not actually blaming just-in-time. You’re blaming batching and you’re blaming economies of scale and you’re blaming overproduction. When you overproduce something, you now have the waste of excess inventories and motion and transportation. Now you have defects and now you have overprocessing and now you have waiting.

When you overproduce things you have a lot of the other wastes which slows down production, which then slows down these manufacturers’ ability to even produce stuff. Think about this: now you have every contractor in the world once they get a project ordering pipe and ordering curtain wall and ordering roofing and ordering insulation and ordering fasteners all right now without actually considering when they need it.

You have people getting in front of you in line that might not need this stuff for two years. But because they’re putting in batch orders, it’s slowing down the production of the facilities and the supply chains, which then creates excess inventory, which then creates motion, which then creates transportation, which then creates defects, which then creates overprocessing, which then creates waiting because we’re in a frantic, stupid, non-flow situation.

How to Fix It: Level Production Based on Actual Need

Let’s talk about how to fix it. If every vendor, every manufacturing plant, every supplier verified, had a way to magically verify exactly when it was needed everything, then they could level production. Not slow down, level production. And put the orders in the right sequence, in the right order based on need. They would be able to triage these things and actually work in a flow and probably be able to take care of our needs.

But because we have companies, and probably Amazon and Google and Apple and all these companies building these big warehouses ordering everything all the time are the biggest culprits, because we are ordering from batching according to economies of scale and not respecting our other networks and not respecting the supply chain and not respecting each other, then we’re being selfish and we’re causing the ripple in the system.

When you order everything all at once:

• You’re batching
• You’re relying on economies of scale which we don’t have anymore
• You’re overproducing
• You’re cutting in line ahead of other people that actually need it sooner than you do

And that is what is slowing everything down. Not just-in-time.

If we actually wanted to fix the supply chains, everyone in the world would get their project on a rhythm with a good schedule. They’d throw CPM out the door. They would create a Takt plan with a Takt time. They would all create procurement logs with the right material inventory buffers and they would submit honest and true orders according to what was actual possible for the production system. Everybody would be in the right spot in line working at the same rhythm at the right distance apart. That’s how you would fix this thing.

But in the absence of not being able to fix this thing, we’re just going to have to deal with the consequences of us just not knowing what just-in-time is. Everyone is in a mad rush and that is what is causing the problem.

Blame Yourself, Not Just-In-Time

Jason wants you to know, even though you might have to just go submit your batch order, even though to play this nasty dirty poker game you might have to go trick your suppliers and you might have to try and cut in line because that’s what you need to do to take care of your owner, Jason does want you to know that every time you do that, you are causing the problem.

So the next time that you’re like “Oh my gosh, we can’t get our materials. We can’t get our insulation. We can’t get our fasteners and man, it’s just because I keep submitting these batch orders ahead of when I actually need it because I’m lying to suppliers and disrespecting my competitors,” Jason at least wants you to blame it on the right person.

Even if we can’t get out of it, stop blaming it on just-in-time. Blame it on yourself because you are batching and you’re overproducing and you’re causing the problem. You’re being dishonest and you are essentially lying to people and you’re cutting in line.

Every time you submit that batch order, every time, and you might need to, every time you might need to, Jason’s just saying, he’s not saying don’t do it. If everyone else is playing dirty, you might have to play dirty too. But Jason wants you to sit there and giggle to yourself: “I am a part of the problem. I just submitted a batch order before when I needed it. And I’m encouraging and trying to leverage an economy of scale that doesn’t exist and overproducing and causing waste. And I’m slowing everybody down and cutting in line and disrespecting my competitors. I just did that.”

Giggle to yourself for a minute and then just walk away knowing that you’re the problem and say “I don’t care.” Everything’s fair in love and war, right? Just modify the sentence to say everything’s fair in love and war and construction.

That’s what Jason wants you to do. But under no circumstances, under no circumstances should you blame just-in-time. Just-in-time wasn’t the problem. If everybody had started to share the increased buffer durations with each other but still focus on just-in-time, we would be better off right now than we are.

Jason wants everybody to share this podcast. He wants this podcast to go famous. He wants people to be pissed off at him or he wants people that know what they’re doing to be happy with him and share the message that we have got to stop demonizing just-in-time.

Because we’ve got overproduction and batching over in the corner of this room giggling being like “I just blamed just-in-time. I just pushed my sister down the stairs and blamed it on the dog.” That’s what’s going on right now.

Stop blaming just-in-time. Get educated on what it actually is. When you blame just-in-time you’re blaming flow, you’re blaming Takt, and you’re blaming pull systems, which will actually make you go faster. You’re letting overproduction and you’re letting batching off the hook, which we can’t do if we ever want to get better.

Go do your dishonest ordering of materials, but at least when you do so blame yourself. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What does just-in-time actually mean in construction?

Just-in-time means what’s the required on job date according to your Takt time, the buffer that should be ahead of it (the amount of materials stored ahead of or on the job within a certain time range so workers aren’t waiting but you’re not tripping over excess), management and checking in on the supply chain ahead of that buffer with certain points of release, and utilizing supermarkets (stage locations outside of work where you pull from inventory buffers at the right time and quantities). It’s NOT ordering something to arrive on the job site just right when you need it.

Q: Why are supply chains actually broken right now?

Root cause: pandemic, disease, and social systems encouraging people to stay home. We interrupted the flow of materials and supply throughout the world. People are quitting in droves, still on unemployment, still not working intentionally even though they could. Then we made it worse by overproducing and batching. Every contractor ordering pipe, curtain wall, roofing, insulation, fasteners all right now without considering when they need it. People getting in front of you in line who don’t need stuff for two years but putting in batch orders, slowing down production of facilities and supply chains.

Q: What happens when you batch order and overproduce?

When you overproduce, you create waste of excess inventories, motion, transportation, defects, overprocessing, and waiting. When you overproduce things you have a lot of the other wastes which slows down production, which then slows down manufacturers’ ability to produce stuff. You’re cutting in line ahead of people who actually need it sooner. You’re slowing down the entire production system throughout the world because you’re freaking out and reacting. You’re being dishonest, lying to suppliers, disrespecting competitors.

Q: How would we actually fix supply chains?

Everyone in the world would get their project on a rhythm with a good schedule. Throw CPM out the door. Create a Takt plan with Takt time. All create procurement logs with the right material inventory buffers. Submit honest and true orders according to what was actual possible for the production system. Everybody would be in the right spot in line working at the same rhythm at the right distance apart. Vendors would level production and put orders in the right sequence based on actual need. They could triage and work in flow.

Q: What should I do if I have to batch order to survive?

You might have to play dirty if everyone else is playing dirty. That’s what you need to do to take care of your owner. But at least blame it on the right person. Stop blaming just-in-time. Blame yourself. Sit there and giggle: “I am a part of the problem. I just submitted a batch order. I’m leveraging an economy of scale that doesn’t exist and overproducing and causing waste and slowing everybody down and cutting in line and disrespecting my competitors.” Walk away knowing you’re the problem and say “I don’t care. Everything’s fair in love and war and construction.”

On we go.