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What's a Just In Time Inventory Control Theory?
Me? I'm always organised well in advance obviously!
As if...
It’s the theory that stock costs should be minimised, so you get your inputs just in time rather than storing them.
I think in farming we need to think more laterally when talking about efficiency.*this is no criticism of anyone*
Have we as the livestock industry become too obsessed by efficiency? If there’s one industry where you can’t operate on the Just In Time Inventory Control Theory is livestock farming isn’t it?
I know someone who only orders more grub when he's run out. "Just out of time".
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
I think in farming we need to think more laterally when talking about efficiency.
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.
Surely there’s nothing wrong with ‘efficiency’
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?
The first two are most efficient but with a Spring like this would they have been the right calls?
- Buy more stock to graze it?
- Bale it and sell it?
- Bale it and keep it for unknown contingencies?
- Defer grazing?
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?