Nice little story you told about "Just-in-Time at Winchester", but no names, no dates, no details, no references, ..... no way to verify any of it. But let's assume your story is, at least from your external viewpoint, accurate.
I never had any problems implementing my parts of JIT at Honda, IBM, Toyota, or GM. If your story is true, it sounds like they just didn't know what they were doing, or had suppliers who couldn't live up to it, or both.
