2006 Volume 58 Issue 1 Pages 40-55
Recently, economic geographers have shown an interest in the spatial implications of Just-in-Time (JIT). Some research papers have emphasized the agglomeration of automotive parts suppliers around car assemblers. Others have attached importance to the dispersion of suppliers away from car assemblers in pursuit of compliant rural laborers. In this study, the authors have investigated the practice of JIT by some suppliers located around Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, in order to attempt to resolve these discussions.
The automotive parts suppliers around Ueda City are located in a distant place from each car assembler, because they were relocated from the metropolitan areas to escape war damage during World War II. The miscellaneous kinds of parts for many car assemblers are produced on the same intensively invested assembly line in a search for efficiency. The network of subcontractors has been developed in this region. Cheap labor from rural areas is utilized.
How has the JIT system been executed in such a distant location? The information about production and logistics can be exchanged immediately by electronic data processing. This enables suppliers to maintain about five days’ lead time between production and delivery. In logistics, the parts are dispatched to depots by large trucks to raise loading efficiency in middle and long distance transportation. The parts are then frequently delivered in small lots from the depot to the car assembler on schedule.
The parts suppliers which are the objects of this study have a high market share. They are relatively large-scale producers of systematized and modularized parts. This enables them to trade automotive parts with car assemblers even at a long distance and to impute transportation costs to the price of parts.
