Supply chains for agricultural commodities with their various constraints such as production lead time, seasonal production, and methods of storage are limited in the extent to which techniques like Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory management can be applied. It is beyond the ability of producers to control harvest time and many agricultural products are perishable so that they can incur exceptional losses in storage if they are not handled correctly. This is a source of additional costs and inefficiency in supply chain management. The purpose of this study is to reduce or eliminate such sources of loss and inefficiency and to identify success factors for the JIT inventory management system where it can be applied for agricultural products. Where JIT techniques can be applied in supply chain management for agricultural products, costs such as transportation, inventory, and storage losses can be reduced with concurrent increases in efficiency. In the paper, some of the problems associated with applying JIT inventory control methods in supply chain management for agricultural commodities will be reported through a series of case studies.

• Tae Ho Kim
• Malcolm Wegener