Just-in-time Purchasing Strategies and Operational Performance of Manufacturing Firms in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

The study had the objective of establishing the JIT purchasing strategies that are commonly used in Nairobi’s manufacturing firms and ascertain the effect of the JIT purchasing strategies on operational performance of all manufacturing industries within Nairobi County, Kenya. The study therefore identified JIT purchasing strategies that are commonly used by manufacturing firms, which included supplier strategy, quantity strategy, quality strategy and shipment strategy and used them as the study’s independent variables while the operational performance was the dependent variable. The study adopted a descriptive research design where primary data was obtained through administration of structured questionnaire. The target of the study was a population of all the 149 manufactured firms within Nairobi County that are registered with KAM and out of the 149 questionnaires given to these firms 106 responses were collected which constituted 71.1% of the response rate. Descriptive analysis established the means, mode, and standard deviations to describe different statements’ responses that assessed the incorporation of the study variables in firms’ operations. The study utilized regression analysis to establish how operational performance of manufacturing firms is influenced by JIT purchasing strategies. In the findings the study identified that the model used only explains 38.3 % of the changes on operational performance indicating that the other factors that are not covered by the study influence 61.7% of operational performance. Supplier strategy had a negative effect of 0.050 on operational performance, quantity strategy had a positive effect of 0.101 on operational performance, quality strategy had a positive effect of 0.282 on operational performance and lastly shipment strategy had a positive effect of 1.134 on operational performance.