Half the lean-inventory articles you'll read online make JIT sound like a religion. We're agnostic. JIT works for some SKUs, wrecks operations for others, and is genuinely dangerous when there's a single point of failure in the supply chain. Score your situation across 6 dimensions and see if it actually fits before committing.
JIT (just-in-time) reduces inventory cost by accepting more risk: smaller safety stock, more frequent smaller orders, tighter coupling to your supplier. Done well, it cuts working capital dramatically. Done poorly, it multiplies the impact of every disruption — a 3-day supplier delay becomes a stockout.
Most operators who fail at JIT fail for one of three reasons: (1) they didn't have a real alternative supplier, so a single hiccup cascaded; (2) their demand was too variable for the formula to be reliable; (3) their carrying cost was already low, so the savings weren't worth the risk.
This calculator scores your situation from 0 (very bad fit for JIT) to 5 (excellent fit) on each of:
Each dimension is weighted by its actual impact on outcome, then summed. The result is mapped to a verdict.