What is Just-in-TIME (JIT)

This chapter looks back on changes in the supply chain of the Japanese automobile industry and then examines its future. In the wake of Volkswagen's diesel fraud, the global automobile industry is moving toward abolishing internal combustion engine vehicles and switching to EVs (electric vehicles) as the environmental policies of each country join the battle for the initiative over next-generation cars. Industry members are in a hurry to gain the initiative. In EV, there is a belief that the horizontal division of labor in the supply chain will be promoted by eliminating complicated engines. Therefore, in this chapter, the author examined whether the vertical “KEIRETSU” or “KEIRETSU transaction,” a characteristic of the supply chain of the Japanese automobile industry, would be swallowed up by the wave of horizontal division of labor.