| As a supply chain paradigm, just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing has not yet been investigated in a comprehensive manner to develop a holistic understanding of the complex relationships that lead to its success. Few scholars have attempted to understand the impact of business process orientation, information technology orientation, supplier relationship orientation, and change management orientation on JIT. Therefore, some of the underlying reasons for JIT's benefits and limitations remain unknown. One purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study conducted on a sample of small American furniture manufacturers is to determine whether JIT adopters are more profitable than non-JIT adopters. Another purpose of the study was to measure the contribution of business process, supplier relationship, information technology, and change management orientation to the profitability of JIT adopters. The main finding of the study was that JIT was indeed an influencer of numerous performance-related measures, but the reasons for this influence could not be found in the supplier domain and in the general business domain. Suggestions were made to measure demand-sensing sophistication and intra-factory efficiency as possible mediators of the JIT-performance relationship. While the study confirmed the JIT-performance relationship, and found that this relationship to be robust even after measures of change management, information technology, and supplier relationship were concluded, more work needs to be done to identify significant mediators between the JIT-performance relationship. |
