Just in time
- Thread starter Ysgythan
- Start date
- Location
- Ceredigion, wales
What's a Just In Time Inventory Control Theory? 
Me? I'm always organised well in advance obviously!
As if...
Me? I'm always organised well in advance obviously!
As if...
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
An excellent question and I say yes
All primary production industries try
Efficiency at the cost of function, most of the time
It is easily summed up in my mind as breaking your left hand with a hammer so you can do the same amount of work one-handed
Function first!!
Leave the "race to the bottom" to manufacturing, they can afford it, farmers can no longer afford to look in the wrong direction for answers IMO
All primary production industries try
Efficiency at the cost of function, most of the time
It is easily summed up in my mind as breaking your left hand with a hammer so you can do the same amount of work one-handed
Function first!!
Leave the "race to the bottom" to manufacturing, they can afford it, farmers can no longer afford to look in the wrong direction for answers IMO
- Location
- Buxton, Derbyshire
Not sure how we as a livestock producer can operate anything other than JIT ordering 6t corn bin so no point reordering until it’s nearly empty and with drugs the vets don’t like you stock piling it. And apart from parts for maintenance we don’t really buy anything else.
6t corn bin so no point reordering until it’s nearly empty and with drugs the vets don’t like you stock piling it. And apart from parts for maintenance we don’t really buy anything else.so you bill for the item made before you get a bill for items purchased to make the said item in the first place
works well most of the time
Suffolk Serf
Member
- Location
- Bury/Thetford
I know someone who only orders more grub when he's run out. "Just out of time".
- Location
- North Antrim
I think in farming we need to think more laterally when talking about efficiency.
- Location
- Devon
I'm not sure grass growth is going to even be JIT this year. In fact I'm pretty sure it's not .
But the serious point is having a plan B and leaving the sourcing of that until last minute - spending lots of money on feed blocks or similar if they aren't needed if the weather improved isn't relished.
@Ysgythan when you posed the question in Nith's thread I had just read in the medicine cost thread about someone needing to source drugs from their vet who weren't keeping stock.
That is a definite welfare issue. A larger scale farmer could perhaps be expected to keep his own AB stock of his own of commonly used stuff, but questionable whether someone smaller scale could or should. Especially in today's climate of reduced AB use.
But the serious point is having a plan B and leaving the sourcing of that until last minute - spending lots of money on feed blocks or similar if they aren't needed if the weather improved isn't relished.
@Ysgythan when you posed the question in Nith's thread I had just read in the medicine cost thread about someone needing to source drugs from their vet who weren't keeping stock.
That is a definite welfare issue. A larger scale farmer could perhaps be expected to keep his own AB stock of his own of commonly used stuff, but questionable whether someone smaller scale could or should. Especially in today's climate of reduced AB use.
spin cycle
Member
- Location
- north norfolk
That’s the point. Other industries don’t face gaol for animal cruelty for the non run of the mill years.
Go on...
What got me thinking was talking to my Dad this morning. I told him of dairy farmers locally desperately looking for silage bales because they couldn’t turn out and he said “old hay is better than old money, old money is pointless if there’s no hay to buy with it because stock eat hay not money.” His grandfather always wanted half of the fodder store left at the end of February because in a year like this “March kills and April flays”. I was just wondering if what previous generations considered sensible stockmanship was now viewed as extravagant or inefficient, and in turn that bites us on the arse.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Surely there’s nothing wrong with ‘efficiency’, but if you run a minimal cost system I would suggest you also need a plan B (as @Poorbuthappy posted).
Personally, I can see this Spring being very similar to 2013 (post snow), where grass growth is delayed and reserves are taken out already.
My ‘plan B’ is the delivery of 1000L of liquid feed last week and not selling the last 50t of lifted beet that’s still sat in the old silage clamp here (that crop grown purely as an insurance crop to allow for ‘plan B’ years). Jiggling stock around so that triplet ewes are pulled out to preferential grazing already, so that strip grazed swedes will last the twins up until lambing starts.
Not particularly worried at this stage, although i’d Obviousl6 rather have sold that 50t of beet, and not had to buy in the liquid feed, however, I still realise the costs incurred are far less than in ‘the good old days’.
Personally, I can see this Spring being very similar to 2013 (post snow), where grass growth is delayed and reserves are taken out already.
My ‘plan B’ is the delivery of 1000L of liquid feed last week and not selling the last 50t of lifted beet that’s still sat in the old silage clamp here (that crop grown purely as an insurance crop to allow for ‘plan B’ years). Jiggling stock around so that triplet ewes are pulled out to preferential grazing already, so that strip grazed swedes will last the twins up until lambing starts.
Not particularly worried at this stage, although i’d Obviousl6 rather have sold that 50t of beet, and not had to buy in the liquid feed, however, I still realise the costs incurred are far less than in ‘the good old days’.
Old Boar
Member
- Location
- West Wales
JIT in farming has obvious problems. Say you have a sick cow and have run out of the drugs needed (you have used them or they are out of date, and you did not know you would need it), so you nip down the vets, get a bottle (and a new needle!), nip back to find the cow considerably worse. You have to get the vet. You now have costs of time off farm, transport costs and vet costs.
Or like me, you have a tub of plumbing fittings that have cobwebs in them. A pipe splits and the right fitting is not in the tub. So you nip down....
We cannot foresee what calamity is going to hit us next. We are not fulfilling regular orders of stuff that does not die, go mouldy or a mouse poops in it.
So we tend to hord stuff in barns that "might come in" and quite often it does. An old tube for a cluster can be used for a split pipe to quite good effect.
Or like me, you have a tub of plumbing fittings that have cobwebs in them. A pipe splits and the right fitting is not in the tub. So you nip down....
We cannot foresee what calamity is going to hit us next. We are not fulfilling regular orders of stuff that does not die, go mouldy or a mouse poops in it.
So we tend to hord stuff in barns that "might come in" and quite often it does. An old tube for a cluster can be used for a split pipe to quite good effect.
As an aim it’s laudable, necessary even. It’s the things done in its name though.
Worked example.
What do you do with a surplus of grass?
- Buy more stock to graze it?
- Bale it and sell it?
- Bale it and keep it for unknown contingencies?
- Defer grazing?
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I would suggest that the most 'efficient' thing to do would be to bale and store some for that Plan B, then consider the surplus after that. Isn't that what farmers have always done, 'making hay while the sun shines'? I cleared the last of my 2012 baled hay back in the Autumn, to delay putting ewes onto roots as it was so wet. I still have some (much better) stuff made last year, to help out the Plan B for this year's lambing.
another worked example
The NSA reckon the sheep industry is 16% less stratified than in 2003, down from 71% then. They say lowland farmers are breeding their own replacements.
Ticks the efficiency box, but is it the right thing to do?
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Without a doubt, for me anyway. IMO you can't begin to select and improve on anything, if you leave the breeding of your replacements to someone else, whether uphill or down.
The only people that lose out from the reduction in stratification are the hill farmers that rely on that trade for their income, but I am not responsible for their livelihoods and business decisions.
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