Regardless of the great benefits of JIT, it has its limitation, according to Cheng(11-14), JIT has the following major limitations:

· Culture Differences The organizational cultures vary from firm to firm. There are some cultures that tie to JIT success but it is difficult for an organization to change its cultures within a short time.

· Traditional Approach The traditional approach in manufacturing is to store up a large amount of inventory in the means of backing up during bad time. Those companies rely on safety stocks may have a problem with the use of JIT.

· Difference in implementation of JIT Because JIT was originally established in Japanese, it is somehow different for implementing in western countries. The benefits may vary.

· Loss of individual autonomy This is mainly due to the shorter cycle times which adds pressures and stress on the workers.

· Loss of team autonomy This is the result of decreasing buffer inventories which lead to a lower flexibility of the workers to solve problem individually.

· Loss of method autonomy It means the workers must act some way when problems occur, this does not allow them to have their own method to solve a problem.

· JIT success is varied from industry to industry Some industries are benefit more from JIT while others do not.

· Resistance to change JIT involves a change throughout the whole organization, but human nature resists to change. The most common resistance are emotional resistance and rational resistance. Emotional resistance are those psychological feeling which hinder performance such as anxiety. Rational resistance is the deficient of the needed information for the workers to perform the job well.

Some other limitations are pointed out by Melnyk and Denzler(428-429):

· Relationship between management and employees is important A mutual trust must be built between management and employees in order to have effective decision making.

· Employee commitment Employees must commit to JIT, to enhance the quality as their ultimate goal, and to see JIT as a way to compete rather than method used by managers to increase their workload.

· Production level JIT works best for medium to high range of production volume.

· Employee skill JIT requires workers to be multi-skilled and flexible to change.