Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the relationships among organization ownership structure, implementation of just‐in‐time (JIT), and production operations performance.Design/methodology/approach: A theory model for explaining the relationships among ownership, manufacturing strategy and performance was constructed, and then several hypotheses were tested using statistical analysis models based on questionnaire responses from Chinese manufacturing firms.Findings: The results show that organization ownership not only impacts the implementation of JIT and operations performance, but also impacts the relationship between JIT implementation and operations performance. Moreover, the results show that, for firms operated in China, the implementation frequency of JIT practices varies with organization ownerships; the foreign and joint venture firms (JVFs) were found to have a higher level of JIT implementation and can also achieve better performance from JIT implementation than state‐owned and private‐owned firms (POF). Also, JIT implementation was found to have a significantly positive relationship with operations performance in all types of ownership firms, with the exception of private ownership firms.Research limitations/implications: The research only covers manufacturing firms in China. Further research is needed to test the wide implications of this research in other countries or industries.Practical implications: This paper provides insights into how to improve JIT implementation performances, especially in various organization ownership structures.Originality/value: The paper appears to be one of the first studies of relationship between ownership structure and JIT implementation in China manufacturing environment.

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among just-in-time (JIT), total quality management (TQM) and production operations performance (POP) based on the survey data from Chinese manufacturing firms, provide managerial implications of effectively implementing JIT and TQM for firms in developing countries.Design/methodology/approach: – Questionnaires were collected from 173 Chinese manufacturing firms. Three hypotheses on the relationships among JIT, TQM and POP were first established based on literature review. Empirical study method of structural equation modeling using SPSS and AMOS as data processing tools is employed to test the hypotheses.Findings: – The results show that, on one hand, JIT positively influences TQM and POP; on the other hand, although TQM also has positive relationship with POP, the relationship is not significant at a given significant level. Meanwhile, the author survey also shows that JIT and TQM have complementary relationship, i.e., JIT and TQM can benefit each other in a firm.Practical implications: – TQM is a base of implementing JIT, it is valuable to concurrently implement JIT and TQM in manufacturing firms in order to improve the POP.Originality/value: – It is believed that this research reveals new insights about the JIT and TQM implementation in Chinese manufacturing firms; it has practice value for firms to improve the implementation performance of JIT and TQM.

This paper incorporates the three pillars of sustainability—economic, environmental, and social dimensions—into a supply chain. A multiobjective programming model which jointly minimizes costs, emissions, and employee injuries in a supply chain is first constructed. Using the weighted‐sum approach with weights setting by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the model is solved by normalization of the minima of the three objectives. A numerical example is conducted to test the model. The results show that it is indeed possible to integrate environmental and social metrics in supply chain system optimization. Multiobjective optimization can balance the social, environmental, and economic performance. This paper presents a new multidimension perspective for optimizing supply chain; it will inspire practitioners to change their decision ideas and improve supply chain sustainability.