While JIT Services has the good fortune to work with many different types of suppliers and clients, our core business is automotive and consumer electronics. As a two-time Chrysler Gold Award winner, we make it our business to understand the ins-and-outs of the complex automotive and consumer electronics supply chains. While they have industry standards and practices that are always changing, we have had tremendous success with these particular niche markets and are grateful to have them at our center.
The Heart of JIT Services
Our core business—the heart of our business—was a part planned and partly earned evolution. As a company, we planned to be a leader in the automotive space, and we worked hard and made a name for ourselves. As fate would have it, the same component suppliers that ship to automotive companies thought we did such a good job of handling their automotive work, they decided to send their consumer electronic components to JIT Service. That’s how our consumer electronics niche started and continued to grow fruitfully.
Challenges in Automotive and Consumer Electronics Supply Chain
There are, literally, a lot of moving pieces when it comes to the automotive supply chain. Along with outdated supplier technology and production management systems, the industry faces many other challenges like, “… [the] inability to adapt to fluctuations in demand due to capacity constraints, financial constraints due to lack of liquidity, supply chain complexity increases with the globalization of the supply chain, qualified labor shortages and lack of information visibility with legacy technologies.”
Consumer electronics has its own challenges. It’s an ever-evolving chain of new products flooding the market. In addition, people have multiple devices and demand continues to grow. Shrinking life cycles and a greater need for risk management, collaboration, and sustainability are also buffered by the need to be as fluid as possible with supply chain design and digital supply chain.
The JIT Services Difference: Best Practices
One of the major differences at JIT is that we are supplier agnostic, meaning we work with everyone. Several parts distributors use our services and they keep competing lines of electronic components at JIT. We are not considered a components distributor because we do not buy and resell components. We handle all components with the same proven, regimented procedures. Millions of dollars’ worth of inventory pass-through JIT on a weekly basis. Suppliers can view their inventory, download reports and place orders electronically through a secure web portal that can be accessed 24/7 with real-time information.
Another best practice that sets us apart is we are detailed and completely transparent, in a good way! We track tons of information such as date codes, lot codes, 1T numbers, serial numbers, and batch numbers. Because these components are placed into safety items (like airbag controllers), traceability is absolutely critical for the safety of the end-consumer and for the suppliers to have absolute faith in what they are providing. In fact, the JIT department that handles ESD sensitive electronic components has doubled in size over the last year.
We also move with client need. We manage supply and labor as dictated by our supplier’s need. We invest in cutting-edge, user-intuitive technology and practice lean logistics best practices. We find this attention to detail and analytic monitoring allows us to be more fluid and flexible for our clients.
Quite possibly, the service JIT provides that really differentiates us is something the bigger companies don’t have, which is personalized, customized services. We tailor our services to meet the needs of all of our partners, large and small, Fortune 500 to start-ups, in diverse niche industries. If you’re looking for a partner to take your business to the next logistics level, contact us today.