Logistics, Warehousing, and the Last Mile

Modern inventory logistics rests heavily on the just-in-time (JIT) philosophy developed within the Toyota Production System in Japan in the decades following the Second World War, most closely associated with Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno. JIT sought to minimize the capital tied up in idle inventory by having components and materials arrive at the production line only as needed, synchronized closely with actual customer demand rather than produced against forecasts and stockpiled, a principle subsequently adopted well beyond automotive manufacturing across global retail and electronics supply chains, though the approach also leaves supply chains with comparatively little buffer against sudden disruption, as the COVID-19 pandemic later illustrated.