Actually, Toyota moved away from JIT after 2011 earthquake when several of it’s factories had to stop production due to lack of parts from other factories impacted by earthquake. One of the change was increased inventory levels of components.

Toyota is one of the last automaker to reduce production due to the current chip shortage, because they had enough chips for 18-24 months of production.

Edit: It seems some of Toyota factories in Southeast Asia have shutdown due to Covid spread in those countries resulting in shortage of parts supplied to factories in Japan. Reported to be 40% reduction in production.

Actually Toyota's manufacturing process was changed after Fukushima and was one of the only companies that plans for situations like this: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/09/toyota-how-it-avoided-se...

Edit, what the other poster said.

yeah, but about everyone else?

They now learn the lesson Toyota learned in 2011.

Relevant: The Security Value of Inefficiency by Bruce Schneier

> This drive for efficiency leads to brittle systems that function properly when everything is normal but break under stress. And when they break, everyone suffers. The less fortunate suffer and die. The more fortunate are merely hurt, and perhaps lose their freedoms or their future. But even the extremely fortunate suffer — maybe not in the short term, but in the long term from the constriction of the rest of society.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/07/the_security_...

In UK, where NHS is publicly owned, it was actually policy to have 90% occupancy of ICU beds. If it was less than that, the "extra" beds would be removed.

From a public health standpoint it makes more sense to have two hospitals with 100 beds at 90% capacity than one hospital with 300 beds at 60% capacity. It's leads to better patient outcomes to have the hospital staff work overtime compared to rapidly hiring and training new staff whilst the hospital is being overrun.

Why ? What’s the rationale ? How they arrived at 90 percent figure ?

Do you have a source for that quite extraordinary claim?

Not the parent, and not a backup for the specific claim, but I know that Tory governments since Thatcher have been taking the strategy of misapplying business efficiency tactics to NHS, then when they don't make sense and cause worse outcomes claim that it's because government was involved at all and call for privatization.

No, the government restricts facility size. Look up “Certificate of Need laws” if you’d like more information.

Those exist because the hospitals are privately owned. An area doesn't want hospital companies getting into a pricing war and then both going under leaving the area without hospital service at all.

There'd be no reason for it with a public health care system.

The government tries to keep medical care expensive to avoid competition that might result in some instability so the cure is … government running health care.

Robustness isn't incompatible with capitalism, it's incompatible with any system where the government is willing to swoop in and bail out companies that fail. Companies that plan around failures/shortages/disruptions lose the ability to profit from their planning, while those that didn't plan ahead get showered with free money or cheap loans.

I don’t understand why this is getting downvoted considering this is almost verbatim what Taleb preaches.

he forgot the trigger warning: this post does not blame capitalism for all modern ills.