The Origin And Development Of Containers (VI) —— Just-in-time Production

Just-in-time Production

In the early 1980s, some industrial regions appeared just-in-time production (just-in-time) manufacturing model, just-in-time is a concept proposed by the Japanese Toyota Motor Corporation, refers to the clearance of inventory to improve production quality and processing efficiency. This manufacturing model soon spread around the world.

In 1987, 2/5 of the Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. began to create just-in-time systems, finding that just-in-time required an alternative way to handle shipping - a close relationship with carriers to ensure that shipments were shipped on time. Containerization was essential to this accuracy. Companies need to ship large quantities of parts to keep production lines running at all times, and containerized shipping, controlled by computers, largely reduces risk and provides a bridge to the globalization of manufacturing development. After rigorous consideration of wage levels, tax rates, energy prices import tariffs shipping times and security, companies concluded that the price of shipping was often not a big issue due to the presence of containers to process parts or retail products where production costs were lowest. The revolution in container transport ended in the early 1980s, but the fallout from the container revolution has continued. Over the next 20 years or so, the volume of sea containers carried increased more than fourfold as container transport reduced the price of international shipping. At the same time, container shipping helped, some cities and countries become part of the new global supply chain and brought them economic prosperity.

Half a century after the advent of the Ideal X, 300 million TEUs of containers move cargo on the world's major oceans each year, with 269 of those containers coming from China. Trucks and trains transport an even greater number of containers.