From a business perspective JIT makes a ton of sense. No more warehouses, no more backroom, reduced spoilage, it’s completely awesome. All the way up until it isn’t.
Of course the reality is all these supply chain problems of the last 3 years have at most mildly inconvenienced me. Couple mild issues, but really nothing serious.
I have a MBA background and JIT has always been controversial—weighing short term gain against long term risk.
The problem is that there is no “insurance” you can get that will miraculously resupply inventory if the supply chain has issues.
What corporations did was they rewarded senior managers (with bonuses and stock options) who used short term decision-making.
They did not have to do that—there are many ways to give executives incentives for long term planning.