| Summary: | The concept Just-In-Time (JIT) encounters numerous definitions in the literature. In this thesis JIT is defined as a manufacturing philosophy that has been broken out of, and is a major part of Lean. JIT involves a variety of principles and methods with the purpose of reducing work in progress, lead times and thereby bring up problems to the surface that enables opportunities for improvement. JIT has it origin within the car industry which is characterized by large companies, it is therefore interesting to examine how suitable the JIT concept is for small manufacturing companies.The purpose of this study is to explore the contextual settings and barriers that exist for an implementation of JIT, and the benefits small manufacturing companies in Sweden can derive from the JIT philosophy. A literature study has been conducted to identify contextual factors that can affect an implementation of JIT. Subsequently a case study was made at J. Lundqvist Trävaruaktiebolag, a company located in Piteå which manufactures houses according to a modular system. Through observations and interviews at the case company various contextual factors were identified that will affect the case company’s possibility to work with JIT.The case study found that the company were already working with a number of concepts that are described in the JIT literature, such as standardized products and processes, multifunctional employees and the use of quality circles. The results from the study is in line with much of the literature proposing that smaller companies have certain advantages relative to larger companies. The company did not work with other concepts described in the literature such as Total Productive Maintenance, setup time reduction and JIT purchasing. This may be due to lack of knowledge, lack of adequate production planning and poor negotiating position, where the size of the company is considered a major explanation to these causes. The case company’s production was make-to-order based, which was considered a major obstacle for ...
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