ABSTRACT
The central objective of JIT is to get a person to quickly learn how to do a job correctly, safely, and conscientiously. People learn in many different ways, but we are looking for the fastest, most effective way. JIT is the most efficient and effective way to teach processes to any capable and willing learner. Therefore, JIT is not necessary because people can learn a job without it. The downside, of course, is that it will take longer, the final learned process might not be what we want, there may be some poor quality product created and some equipment damaged, and the learner may hurt himself. Instruction consists of a wide spectrum, with JIT at one end and no external instruction (all self-training) at the other end. The improvements in quality, productivity, safety, and cost are maximized with JIT and minimized with no external instruction. All the instruction methods in between will result in varying amounts of quality, productivity, safety, and cost. Since people learn in many ways, the only requirement is that they receive feedback on what it is they do. Without feedback, there is no learning. If there is no one available to help us learn the job (external feedback), we can learn it by ourselves using our own internal feedback. When learning something by ourselves, there are two main ideas to consider. First, it will most likely take longer to learn the job than if someone were instructing us because we will have to solve each puzzle we confront. Second, because we are using our own knowledge, intelligence, and creativity to solve these mini puzzles along the way to the end, the method we end up with usually will not be identical to that which had been done before. If we are careful and conscientious, the method will accomplish the same objective, but the method and time used to do the job generally will be different. Most likely, the final product will also be somewhat different. In many cases it will be acceptable but often it will not be identical.
