JUST-IN-TIME INVENTORY CONTROL AND THE ECONOMIC-INTEGRATION OF JAPANESE-OWNED MANUFACTURING PLANTS WITH THE COUNTY, STATE AND NATIONAL ECONOMIES OF THE UNITED-STATES

This paper attempts to shed light on the ongoing debate concerning the spatial implications of just-in-time a (JIT) manufacturing systems. T he central issue around which this debate has focused concerns the ext ent to which use of JIT inventory control encourages the spatial clust ering of the members of a JIT network. This paper tests the hypothesis that plants which use JIT inventory control purchase a greater propor tion of their material inputs from inside their host economy than plan ts which do not use JIT inventory control. Using survey data collected from 239 US-based Japanese-owned manufacturing plants, this hypothesi s is tested for host economies defined at three geographic scales-coun ty, state and national. Support for the hypothesis is found at the cou nty, but not at the state and national scales. This suggests that use of JIT inventory control encourages the development of extremely local ized, backward material input linkages and thus provides support for t he argument that JIT encourages the spatial clustering of the members of a JIT network.