You’re running a lemonade stand and considering if you should, make each cup as a customer orders it, make a huge batch, make a medium batch with the option to make more as needed.

Each of those methods has its own pros and cons, which carry different weight depending on the industry and business goals.

For example:

• Just in time, parts arrive just as the order is placed, is used by Toyota.
• Push, produce x amount of goods based on their forecast of demand, is used by bakeries.
• Pull, as soon as an order is placed evaluate if stocking up on that item is needed, is used by Walmart.

You can run a successful lemonade stand with any one of these approaches.

But it gets a lot harder to successfully scale your lemonade stand using any of these inventory management styles.