Quick Changeover / Set Up Reduction (SMED)

In the Future State of many Lean companies, flexibility, reduced inventories, and the ability to produced mixed models without adding changeover (set-up) cost is a key element. Quick Changeover is the common element that links these things and makes them possible.

Quick Changeover is simply the ability to changeover from producing item A to item B with the minimum loss in time. There is a well-developed approach to reducing changeover time from hours to minutes, and this is called “Single Minute Exchange of Dies” or  SMED.

A company implementing quick changeover can have the following benefits:

§         Improved flexibility and responsiveness to customer changes

§         Documentation of set up procedures

§         Reduced process downtime

§         Reduced batch sizes and reduced inventories

§         Increased capacity

§         Reduced waiting time of operators and machinery

§         Reduced operating costs