Just in time

Pull rather than push: downstream demand signals upstream production, inventory is treated as waste, and problems surface immediately because no buffer hides them. Enormously effective, and it worked for decades.

Then the pandemic and the semiconductor shortage exposed how thin the buffers had become, and the counter-swing to just in case was as unthinking as the original adoption. Included as an honest reminder that a method can work for forty years and still be over-applied.