Just‐in‐time manufacturing and logistical complexity: a contingency model

Presents a model that hypothesizes relationships between logistical complexity and both the importance of JIT manufacturing and the most appropriate organization structure for implementing JIT manufacturing. Logistical complexity can be defined in terms of the number of manufacturing steps or the number of different part numbers handled in a factory. Hypothesizes that the greater a factory′s logistical complexity, the greater the importance of JIT manufacturing and the greater the interdependences between different manufacturing steps and people and thus the greater the need for co‐ordinating mechanisms.