Just-in-time or JIT is a concept from manufacturing, more specifically from the discipline of supply chain management that is designed to reduce a manufacturer's costs and increase efficiency by improving the flow of supplies and goods, reducing the amount of in-process inventory that is purchased and stored, and more effectively aligns production, (and production workers), with customer demand.
Juicy
Essentially, JIT can be simplified as a process where component parts inventories are kept extremely low, production is raised or lowered to match ebbs and flows of customer demand, and the overall manufacturing process becomes more agile and less costly. JIT has been around for a long time in the manufacturing world, but now, and as highlighted by a recent piece in the New York Times titled 'A Part-Time Life, As Hours Shrink and Shift, many of these concepts are bleeding into retail and service industries as well.
In the NYT piece, we learn how in more and more Part-time dominated workplaces like retail and fast or fast-casual dining, organizations and front-line managers are using JIT concepts, (enabled by more sophisticated workforce scheduling technologies), to better match and adapt the part-time worker's schedules to ever-shifting customer demand and conditions. Take a look at an example of near JIT scheduling from the NYT piece:
At the Jamba Juice shop at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, along with the juice oranges and whirring blenders is another tool vital to the business: the Weather Channel.
The shop’s managers frequently look at the channel’s Web site and plug the temperature and rain forecast into the software they use to schedule employees.
“Weather has a big effect on our business,” said Nicole Rosser, Jamba’s New York district manager.
If the mercury is going to hit 95 the next day, for instance, the software will suggest scheduling more employees based on the historic increase in store traffic in hot weather. At the 53rd Street store, Ms. Rosser said, that can mean seven employees on the busy 11-to-2 shift, rather than the typical four or five.
That sounds really cool, and pretty smart as well, no? You could even argue that incorporating an external condition like the weather into financial, operational, and workforce planning is a perfect example of the latest buzzword 'Big Data'. Either way, for the managers and owners of the Jamba Juice it is a smart application of data, technology,and understanding of their customers to more efficiently meet demand, (and increase profits).
But unlike manufacturing components that sit on a shelf in a warehouse waiting to be uses, the JIT levers in this example are actual people, the part-time workers of the Jamba Juice that, again unlike spare axles or tires, have lots of other things to balance around their work making smoothies. Other jobs, school, family obligations, child care - it could be anything, but in a world where their work schedules become less and less predictable, (more JIT), their challenges and stress levels naturally ratchet higher.
Most of these folks, I would bet, are not just sitting at home checking the Weather Channel like their managers are, waiting to see if a 90-degree day might mean they'll get called in to work.
The point of this?
I suppose that in a world where data, technology, and the increasingly powerful combinations that are forming from the two that enable us to get better and better at utilizing resources of all kinds, that the actual Human resources get the same treatment as the other components of production.
Have a great week all!