Despite the application of JIT by Sugar Manufacturing Companies in Uganda, in 2017, high inventory costs were reported, on prices of production inputs like raw materials & labor costs. Further, pressure from farmers, unreliability of the Vendors and long lead time that affected the organizational performance in terms of delays in delivery and high production costs were also reported. Just-In-Time quality improvement tool is being used in several companies in Uganda. However, it is newly introduced within the sugar processing sector and no studies have been conducted to examine how it use affects organizations.

The research adopted a cross sectional study design, and targeted a study population of 280 employees, from which a sample size of 165 respondents were randomly selected from categories such as; top management, supervisors and other employees. Semi-structured questionnaires and interview guides were used to gather data. Results revealed that out of the three variables (Lead time management, material handling and vendor reliability), vendor reliability had a weak associative positive significant relationship with organizational performance (r = 0.293*; P=0.039; Adjusted R Square = 0.067), lead time management and materials handling did not have any associative nor significant relationship with organizational performance.
Lead time management and organizational performance (r=0.078; P=0.589); materials handling and organizational performance (r=0.039; P=0.789). Qualitative data results indicated that gaps existed like; no integration of planning and forecasting of the company with vendors, inconsistent and poor information flow with the vendors and low resource allocation for employee training and development by the company. In conclusion, vendor reliability is a predictor of employee performance and companies are advised to pilot innovations so that lessons learnt are used to inform further implementation of activities.