When the Trucks Stop: A JIT-vs-JIC Lesson From One Hard Winter
In late 2020, a regional builder we will call Northpoint had spent three years perfecting a just-in-time (JIT) inventory system. Materials arrived the week they were needed, warehousing costs were low, and cash was not tied up in stock sitting on a shelf. On paper it was textbook lean. Then a supplier two provinces away closed for two weeks after a COVID outbreak, a ferry schedule changed, and a single missing batch of structural fasteners idled a forty-person crew for nine days. The story is composite and anonymized, but the lesson is one many organizations relearned the hard way during the pandemic recovery.
Two philosophies, one trade-off
Just-in-time minimizes inventory by synchronizing deliveries with demand. Just-in-case (JIC) deliberately holds buffer stock to absorb shocks. Neither is right or wrong; each trades a different cost. JIT optimizes for capital efficiency and waste reduction. JIC optimizes for resilience and continuity. The mistake Northpoint made was not choosing JIT — it was applying JIT uniformly to every item, including the few whose absence could stop everything.
JIT is a system, not a slogan. It only works when lead times are stable, suppliers are reliable, and demand is predictable. Remove any of those and the model becomes fragile.
JIC is insurance, and insurance has a premium. Buffer stock costs money to hold, store, and sometimes write off. The question is never whether to pay, but how much risk justifies the premium.
The real answer is segmentation. Not every part deserves the same treatment. Treat your catalogue like a portfolio, not a single position.
What Northpoint changed
After the shutdown, the team did not abandon JIT. They sorted materials into tiers. High-value, easily sourced, short-lead items stayed JIT. A small set of critical-path items — long lead times, single supplier, or capable of halting work — moved to a just-in-case buffer sized to cover the realistic worst-case delay. Everything in between got a documented reorder point and a named backup supplier.
Map each material to its lead time, number of qualified suppliers, and the cost of a stockout in crew-days.
Hold buffer stock only where a stockout stops the line, not everywhere it would feel comfortable.
Qualify a second source before you need it; a backup supplier you have never bought from is a hope, not a plan.
Review the tiers each quarter, because lead times and supplier health drift over time.
The following winter, a different supplier slipped a delivery by three weeks. This time the buffer covered it, the crew never stopped, and the holding cost of that small reserve was a rounding error against the nine idle days it would have prevented. The point of the exercise was never to pick a camp. It was to know, item by item, what a missing delivery would actually cost — and to pay for protection only where the math earned it.
Sorting a catalogue into tiers and qualifying backup suppliers is exactly the kind of disciplined, evidence-based work that XNM's procurement, sourcing & contract management can help your team put in place before the next disruption tests it.