Why SMED is important to your organisation

JIT and cycle time reduction results in typically shorter and more frequent production runs. Suddenly your set-ups and changeovers become crucial. During a set-up or changeover your machine is down, not broken down, but nevertheless, it is down as far as running any production is concerned. Set-ups and adjustments are recognised as a major equipment loss under TPM. SMED is a phenomenally successful approach to reducing set-up time to an absolute minimum. There are many examples in industry where a set-up which took one and half hours has been reduced to 45 minutes and then to ten minutes or less. In one of the first applications of the SMED approach, Toyota shortened the set-up time on a 1,000-ton stamping press from 4 hours to 3 minutes.
Why reduce changeover times? What is the benefit? It is all about saving time. By changing over your equipment in a shorter time, you can use the time saved to….do more changeovers!
Why? Because by changing over more frequently, you can afford to produce smaller batch runs (as a shorter time will elapse before you make the same part again), and that is a big benefit.
Why? Because the shorter the batch run, the less inventory you will have to hold. If you make a part once a week, you must make a batch big enough to cover the whole week’s demand. If you can be slick enough to changeover and make the same part twice a week, the batch size only needs to cover half the week – so the inventory carrying aspect quantity halves. If you can make a batch every day of a 5-day week, you are down to one-fifth of the cycle stock. That reduces risk (obsolescence, carrying costs, and quality issues) and releases cash. In manufacturing terms, that is a race worth winning.