I am a bit troubled with the representation of “lean” and “just-in-time” in various core textbooks. What students read far too often is that all inventories are waste and must be eliminated.
“First you identify the waste, then you elimiate it”.
Without recognising that inventories do have a role to play, and that role is easy to address e.g. through various trade-offs; inventory costs vs. other forms of logistics costs. And there is (ideally) also a relationship with customer service to consider.
The grumpy point I want to make is that the misinterpretation is not only the fault of the students; our textbooks can be (and are) vague on this point, and as teachers we must also pin this down more carefully.
Árni
