Disasters show flaws in just-in-time production
Just over a week after the massive earthquake hit the sprawling Texas Instruments chip plant in Tsuchiura, Japan , a gardener is reworking the Japanese garden in an inner courtyard of the office tower attached to the plant.
There is no visible damage to the plant. But if it is structurally sound, the Japan just outside its gates is not. There are cracks in the asphalt on the roads and the concrete walls of older buildings. Gas stations are shut and ration purchases when they do open. Train schedules have been cut sharply. A homemade sign on a hotel window says “Japan: Don’t Let This Quake Defeat You.”
Soon after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, major manufacturers around the world sprang into action. From a conference room at General Motors Co’s technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren to the Memphis headquarters of package delivery giant FedEx Corp, teams of employees scrambled to assess the impact on staff, factories and goods.
“The earliest impact will be felt with high-cost, low-weight products,” said John Hoffecker, managing director of restructuring advisory firm AlixPartners LP. “They come out of Japan by plane so manufacturers don’t have much of a buffer for those products.”
See Special Report: Disasters show flaws in just-in-time production, by Nick Carey, Noel Randewich and Kevin Krolicki for Reuters.
Tags: Business Continuity, earthquake, Japan, JIT, just-in-time, supply chain, tsunami
