Characteristics of JIT:

There are six characteristics of JIT :

Demand Call

The overall system is led or pulled by demand. The need, to serve or supply a customer, triggers activities throughout the operating system. Therefore, where a customer places an order for a manufacturing operation, that order requirement flows back through the system, triggering each of stage of the overall procedure. This contrasts with the practice in several manufacturing systems where work is begun while materials become available (This may be regarded as an input push system).

Reduced Set-up Times and Smaller Batch Sizes

Except in systems where only one kind of product or service is provided, it shall be necessary to 'set up' processes in order that they may deal with a particular type of item. This is a fundamental characteristic of a batch processing system. The JIT aim of processing items only as and when needed necessitates the processing of small batch sizes. It leads to reducing of cost set-ups, which in turn is associated to set-up time, reduces the economic batch size. JIT, hence, is associated with small batch sizes and short, economical set-ups.