AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF JIT IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

In recent years, the Japanese Just-In-Time (JIT) Manufacturing System has gained increasing attention among manufacturers throughout the World. Substantial benefits have often been reported by practitioners of this unique approach to manufacturing management. In Singapore, many companies have also started to pursue JIT manufacturing in recent years. With the growing interest in the local manufacturing circle with JIT, more companies can be expected to practise JIT in the near future. Until now, no attempt has been made to study the Implementation of JIT in Singapore. This empirical study is aimed at exploring and examining the implementation of JIT in this country. More specifically, this study attempts to address the following primary research issues : to establish the profile of JIT companies in Singapore, to examine their pre-implementation and implementation experiences, and to study issues relating to the types of JIT practice commonly adopted by these companies. A survey of the local management journals and magazines over the past five years revealed that only 6 articles devoted to the discussion of JIT have been published. Obviously, this implies that the average local reader is not well informed about JIT. This finding, coupled with the fact that this is an exploratory study, mould the framework in which the literature review for this study is conducted. Besides reviewing the few related studies done by foreign researchers, the literature review is intended to serve as a reading guide to the vast amount of literature on JIT. In order to obtain the necessary information, this study is designed to gather primary data from the relevant companies by means of a cross-sectional field survey through a self-designed questionnaire. Altogether, a total of 69 companies that are practising JIT were identified. However, only 41 companies participated in this study. Numerous interesting findings are established in this study. In general, findings indicate that a typical JIT company in Singapore is most likely to be a medium or large foreign company operating in the Electrical/Electronics Industry. Local JIT practitioners are motivated by both operational and strategic reasons into practising JIT. Despite the fact that numerous problems were encountered by the local JIT companies during the pre-implementation and implementation phases, all the companies have experienced substantial benefits in many areas as a result of practising JIT. The findings obtained in this study suggest that there does not exist a common implementation sequence for JIT practices. A more comprehensive summary of the survey findings is available in the final chapter in this report.