The Nissan assembly plant in Tennessee purchases several thousand unassembled parts for automobiles and then performs final assembly of the vehicles before delivering them to dealers all over the nation. Purchasing parts several days or weeks before they are assembled would increase the total cash outlay the plant has tied up in inventory at any given time. In order to reduce the expense of large inventories, most assembly plants have successfully adopted __________ inventory systems.
a. balanced
b. strategic alliance
c. just-in-time
d. rotational

Just-in-time (JIT) is an inventory management strategy that eliminates to need to hold high volumes of stocks. In JIT, materials are purchased to coincide with the production process. Materials bought will not be kept in the stores but will go into the production process right away.

Should the Nissan team adopt the JIT strategy, it will not require to invest a lot of money in inventory purchases. It will only buy the parts needed for a specific production run. Nissan will free up cash that would be held in components kept in stores. The company will eliminate the possibility of the parts getting damaged while in the store. The management of the Nissan team will have to be extra careful not to run out of stock at production time.