VOL-8 Test 1 Section 3 — IELTS Listening

Part three. You will hear a business student called Ron getting feedback from his tutor on his presentation. First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 24. Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 24.

Part three. You will hear a business student called Ron getting feedback from his tutor on his presentation. First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 24. Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 24.

Thanks, Ron, for coming to my office to discuss the presentation you gave yesterday to the business management seminar. We'll go over what you did with the aim of helping you improve your next presentation. Sounds good.

Now, the topic was the just-in-time, or JIT, supply system used by a lot of manufacturers, first in Japan and then in the West, I think. Yes, but actually one thing I should have made clearer and talked about was the fact that the Americans actually pioneered the idea of just-in-time, though it wasn't called that. Henry Ford and his cars, in fact, at the turn of the 20th century.

And later, a big US supermarket chain used it, and this was where Toyota in Japan got the idea for its car making. Yes, that would have been a good addition. Now, before we go any further, I think I would suggest that you should have stopped and clearly defined just-in-time for your seminar colleagues.

You said its aim was to reduce waste, and you mentioned that classic business theory assumes that stock, or inventory of parts, are counted as assets, but just-in-time sees them as unnecessary waste. But you never told us that JIT simply means waiting until the last moment to order new supplies as you need them. Yes, you're right.

I should have done that. Now, you talked a bit about standardising parts as a way of streamlining JIT. Where did you get your data from?