25 years ago on this forum, or perhaps it was the FDM forum, there was robust debate about Lean, TOC, JIT, etc. Those discussions raged on for 10 years. I spent considerable time thinking about, talking about, experimenting and implementing many of those concepts. It is sad that several of the most active posters in those debates are no longer with us on this earth. I miss them and their contributions. Even more so now with what our world is going through and the challenges we all face running our businesses. Their thoughts would have been very welcome.

The thing that's been on my mind lately is the concept of JIT and whether or not this pandemic has forever altered the perception of this philosophy. I'll admit that long before this pandemic, my company had been venturing further and further away from Lean and TOC concepts, and quite a ways away from JIT. The events of recent months have solidified my stance on this, and I will never again find myself vulnerable to the global supply chain. This is a very broad topic covering many aspects of our businesses and I have a lot of thoughts on this subject. Does anybody else have thoughts on this?

DJS

I turn in an order every week for drawer slides, hinges and locking devices whether I need them or not. If I didn't I would be afraid to bid jobs not knowing when the hardware would get here.

Just in time. Ya right. Just in time for being late by weeks.

I used to always be buying with the Jit mentality, but that's way gone with the current supply chain. Now its more " how much prefinished plywood do you have? I'll take it!!" Preorder me MDF! etc..

Hopefully one day this will end.

Being in a bit of a rural area here and doing varied work I was always in the JIT mode in the past several years with hardware items because I could have pretty much anything on UPS/FedEx in days. I likely carried far more inventory in panel products and hardwoods than most my size that operate in less rural areas just because we have zero access to a weekly, or twice a week, or twice a month, truck for mixed panel orders, small lots of hardwood, finishing supplies, etc..

Its all turned into a nightmare somewhat amplified in a rural area because now hardware can be a bear as well as panel product which were already laden with issues or fed by a single supplier.

The problem for me with moving away from JIT is a very varied breadth of work. Keeping inventory is fine when you run somewhat of a standardized offering but inventorying every configuration of hinge, hardware, and covering all the bases from panel products on down the line is nearly impossible especially for smaller shops.

Thankfully in my area even our contractors/customers are in the same boat. They of course want to push for now-now-now but they are hearing it from everyone and experiencing themselves. So while the push is still there, its a bit more gentle a push for us at least. Feels like Im working 5x as hard, to make 6 phone calls to source what I would have with an email across the board. I cant fathom this will be forever.

Billions are being made, it will come back around as it always does and we will be left as usual making boxes for the same money as last decade wondering where all that extra cash that was spent went as we look at our end of year.

Things have definitely changed in the last 18 months that’s for sure. In my business there is no way I could possibly stock enough of everything to always have what we would need to do any job. We have also realized that what used to take 36 hours to reach us after ordering might take 3-6 weeks. We custom order many things or use a 2 bin kanban card system for stock items. On many of these items we had to increase the qty of the red bin/ back stock and on custom ordered items we have had to place orders much sooner in the process than previously. It’s still just in time though

Everyone happy they were fooled by those that took advantage of the situation?

I really hope I'm wrong, but pretty sure we're too far into the cascade to stop it.

JIT, ha
Its now, Just don't run out.

I ordered Blum Face Frame hinge clips in May. Still on backorder. And the sad part of it is I am 3100 pc into the backorder. People in April still haven't received them.

I've been trying to build my cabinets differently to avoid those hinge mounts. So far it's worked. I still have some left over but only use them when the option is limited.

Ah yes, more delusional nonsense from Karl E Brogger. Your clown show got old years ago. Save your conspiracy theories for the David Koresh and Jim Jones followers, no place for that garbage on this site.

Frank, care to piece together a response that makes sense for the class?

I have not read any of the responses yet.

JMO, no - the pandemic has not "forever altered the perception of this philosophy".

However, it HAS altered my current and near- future perception of JIT. I am, as much as possible, buying 50-100% more at a time than I would have BC. Thankfully, we have been cash-flow-positive enough that I have been able to afford to.

In fact, we ordered our annual T/Ls of uppers Hard Maple last November, and even though we still haven't got it all, our supplier is still honoring the fall prices ($2050/MBF). If they weren't, we would not be in near the same position, although we would have raised prices to offset the increase.

Blum finally weighed in with a press release. Looks like we’re in a bind until Spring at least. Can’t invoice for cabinets without hardware and can’t pay the bills without invoices.

Did big accounts get a heads-up from sales reps so they could stock up before this all got out of control? Somehow the largest producers are still shipping product and smaller operations are getting shafted. Something just doesn’t add up.

Blum shortage update