Abstract—Just-In-Time (JIT) has been a very popular operations strategy partly because of its success in the Japanese industry. Various benefits, for example, inventory reduction, improved in operations efficiency, and faster response, have been studied widely in previous research. Therefore, successful implementation of JIT is vital to many companies. The main objective of this research is to make use of a case study to present various issues surrounding implementation of JIT for an automotive company. This case study also provides evidences for supporting the benefits of employing JIT. Semi- structured interviews were organized and thus relevant data can be collected. The conclusion of this research indicates that JIT system is successful, and operating JIT system can lead to many advantages to the case company. Index Terms—Just-in-time, automotive, manufacturing systems, cases study. I. INTRODUCTION UST-IN-TIME (JIT) theory has been operating widely in the Japanese automobile industry and the electronics industry, though more and more applications can be found in many industries over the world [1]. The ideology of JIT is ‘producing the necessary item in the necessary quantity at the necessary time is an eternal diver of production and operations management’ [2]. In addition, there are many production planning and control methods, like Kanban systems [3], have been developed in order to achieve the objectives of JIT. The ultimate objective of JIT is to enhance flexibility of the whole system, which is one of the competitive factors in future manufacturing and services systems [4-5]. Definition of JIT is quite consistent in many studies (or even textbooks) to the one mentioned in previous section. For example Bozarth & Handfield [6] defined JIT as: ‘A philosophy of manufacturing based on planned elimination of all waste and on continuous improvement of productivity. In the broad sense, it applies to all forms of manufacturing and to many service industries as well’. JIT requires elimination of waste which means that JIT systems could lead to delivery of ‘perfect’ products or services at the ‘exact’ time they are required [7]. In this connection, the Manuscript received January 26, 2011; revised February 14, 2011. B. Hou is with the Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ UK (e-mail: b.hou@uea.ac.uk). H. K. Chan is with the Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ UK (phone: 44-(0)1603-591388; fax: 44-(0)1603-593343; e-mail: h.chan@uea.ac.uk). X. Wang is with the Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ UK (e-mail: xiaojun.wang@uea.ac.uk). main purpose of JIT systems is to identify and to eliminate as many kinds of wastes as possible through improving production activities within a company. A JIT system could be an ‘effective tool’ for assisting a company to reduce cost and then to obtain higher profits [2, p. 1]. Bozarth & Handfield [6] defined lean manufacturing as follows, which is essentially the same to JIT: ‘Lean is a philosophy of production that emphasizes the minimization of the amount of all the resources (including time) used in the various activities of the enterprise’. The aim of lean operation is to achieve a stable flow of products and services that could be delivered to customer at the quality level and time they want in order to satisfy customers’ needs. In addition, lean operation could guarantee the production process to be more flexible when the demand is uncertain. JIT can be considered as one of the variants of production planning and control systems, which are pivotal management tools for satisfying increasingly high client demands and expectations in the business market [8], although traditional production planning and control systems are ‘push’ in nature, which means planning department decides the production schedule and transmits to all production processes according to forecast of the demand of market. Rhodes [7] advocates that a proper information system can facilitate JIT system by communicating quicker among departments. Recently, electronic Kanban has become a trend in modern JIT system [9] and this study will also reveal how such a computer-based kanban system, and also information technology in general, can facilitate implementation of JIT. This is the first research objective of this paper. Obviously, the ‘pull’ nature of JIT helps companies to reduce safety or idle inventory because of the collection of more accurate demand information. In other words, companies do not need to keep excessive inventory. McLachlin [10] reported a list of advantages and benefits claimed for industries implementing JIT system. These include reduced lot sizes, lower inventory, improved quality, reduced waste and rework, improved motivation, greater process yield, increased productivity, increased flexibility, reduced space requirement lower overhead, reduce manufacturing cost, reduced lead-time, elimination of certain tradeoffs such as cost and quality and improved problem solving capabilities. However, steady demand and production planning is almost a pre-requisite for any JIT systems. Thus, the practicability of steady production planning could affect the JIT performance. Therefore, another research objective in this study is to address whether or not steady production system is achievable in the case A Case Study of Just-In-Time System in the Chinese Automotive Industry Bo Hou, Hing Kai Chan, and Xiaojun Wang J Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2011 Vol I WCE 2011, July 6 - 8, 2011, London, U.K. ISBN: 978-988-18210-6-5 ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online) WCE 2011