[Willie Green]

If you visit one of the great hubs of the just-in-time economy - for example, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad's huge container terminal outside Fort Worth in Texas - you gasp at the way the modern world is joined up.
Here, giant, brightly-coloured steel boxes with goods from China, Taiwan, Europe, Israel - all computer-tracked - are routed on their way to consumers in American cities. But as the commentator Philip Bobbitt told me, these linkages illustrate both globalisation's "greatest asset and greatest vulnerability."

Herein lies the Great Fallacy of globalization.
Within the production/inventory supply line, transportation is inherently inefficient, adding only cost, not value to the end product. Global supply lines are a direct contradiction of the JIT imperative to eliminate such wasteful and inefficient motion. The more stable production model is to manufacture locally for the local market utilizing local raw materials and resources.

[cripplecreek]

One of my fist factory jobs was packing parts. I took two separate parts, packed them into two separate boxes. The boxes were then shipped to mexico where someone took the two parts out of the boxes, snapped them together by hand and repacked then into a 3rd box and sent back to us. We took the part out of the box, painted it and shipped it to Canada where it was installed in a larger part. Then the entire part (dashboard assembly) was sent back to Livonia where it was finally installed in a vehicle. (Ford Aerostar)

They did finally find a way of saving money. They cut us $4.25 an hour American workers out of the loop all together.