Car-Clogged Tokyo’s Just-in-Time Warp

After just two cups of sake , Tokyo’s intelligentsia will tell you the real --and delightfully ironic--reason that traffic in their city is so horrible: just-in-time deliveries.

“Just-in-time is the reason everyone is late,” says Shiro Fujita, president of WTT Data, one of Japan’s largest computer networking companies. “The streets are filled with trucks making just-in-time deliveries. It’s ridiculous.”

Just-a-second. Management gurus around the globe insist that just-in-time inventory and production systems are two of the innovations responsible for Japan’s industrial prowess. Indeed, Toyota built itself into the world’s most profitable automobile company by pioneering and refining just-in-time. How could just-in-time lead to the kind of wasted time that so infuriates Tokyo’s commuters?

The answer reveals how the pursuit of efficiency can be an illusion. The key concept underlying just-in-time is to maintain the minimum necessary inventory to build the desired product. Too much inventory is wasteful and may conceal flaws in the production process. By delivering inventory only when and where they are needed--just-in-time--a company can maximize its efficiency and productivity.

This so-called lean production approach has made Japanese manufacturers able to produce a variety of goods swiftly, cheaply and efficiently. Of course, if you’re building things “just-in-time,” you don’t make one or two deliveries a day--you make 10 or 12. That’s a lot of trucks.

Now, Tokyo has thousands of convenience stores, department stores and grocery stores. They want to be as efficient and successful as their industrial brethren. So they have adopted just-in-time delivery systems for their service businesses.

Inventory is often replenished every few hours. (Indeed, a tasty convenience store confection of a rice ball wrapped in fresh seaweed leaves was reportedly restocked every two hours because the seaweed didn’t taste as crisp otherwise.) Throughout the day, tens of thousands of vans and trucks creep through Tokyo’s streets in a desperate bid to be just-in-time.

“They have not yet accomplished just-in-time,” insists Toyota spokesman Hiroshi Hashimoto. “Our system is different: Our trucks are filled with inventory; theirs are often half empty. . . . Just-in-time is not just delivering things to people when they want it--it’s making sure that production is distributed rationally.”

Indeed, NTT Data’s Fujita points out that just-in-time mania not only congests Tokyo traffic, but wastes expensive fuel and contributes heavily to the city’s air pollution.

Just-in-time has passed the point of diminishing returns. The innovations that helped make Japan an economic superpower have now helped make urban life miserable.

But wait! It turns out that Japan’s powerful MITI--the Ministry of International Trade and Industry--has set up an advisory group to address the just-in-time paradox. Toyota has been called in to consult. It appears that Tokyo’s huge service section will soon receive “administrative guidance” encouraging them to share trucks and delivery routes.

Does MITI find it odd that Tokyo’s just-in-time problem has turned it into a traffic cop? “No,” says a MITI spokesman, “we are concerned with encouraging productivity and preventing waste. We also drive here.”

Michael Schrage is a writer, consultant and visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes this column independently for The Times.