Just-in-time (JIT) inventory control reduces the amount of inventory that a company maintains. The concept is based on a cluster of lean manufacturing activities that are designed to only manufacture enough products to meet customer demand. This control system does so by pulling demand through a production facility, where each step in the production process is only authorized to produce a limited amount of inventory.

Thus, just-in-time inventory control is a set of systems that are designed to squeeze a large amount of inventory out of a company. The weak spot of inventory control is any possible fluctuations in just-in-time deliveries; if they are interrupted, then a company has no inventory buffer, and so must shut down its production operations. Thus, a considerable amount of supply chain management is needed to make just-in-time inventory control work properly.