SMED
When applied 'right', SMED can make the difference between profit and loss, and being able to meet the changing demands of your customer.
Smed Lives In The Factory And Beyond
SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) originated with Shigeo Shingo and has evolved and spread around the world over the years. The term refers to the theory and techniques for performing set up operations in under 10 minutes i.e. a number of minutes expressed in a single digit. SMED or QCO (Quick Changeover) as it is often called, had its birth and growth in factories where metal stamping dies, plastic injection molds, and extrusion dies had to be changed, or taken out of the machine, and a different one installed in order to produce the next scheduled part. The time for the changeover covers the period from the last old part being made until the first good new part is produced. If adjustment or fine tuning is required to make a good part, the changeover is not complete.
You may ask why is it necessary to get a changeover done quickly. The answer comes from the need to be lean and eliminate waste from the process. With value added work being any activity transforming the part, product, or service that a Customer is willing to "pay" for constituting only 5 to 10% of a non-lean company's activity, any reduction in non value added waste drops right through to the bottom line as a cost saving. That is understood by even non - lean "Bean Counters".
The focus on waste reduction leads to what constitutes the 9 types of waste defined by lean practices. They are the waste of overproduction, inventory, waiting, transportation, motion, processing, defects, re-prioritization, and people skills. By training people in SMED, all of these wastes can be minimized. This is achieved through the utilization of SMED to externalize elements of the changeover that can be done while the machine is operating. The remaining internal elements are then streamlined to decrease the time the machine is stopped. The many streamlining techniques include using functional fixtures and jigs, as well as eliminating adjustments, and creating parallel steps which are completed at the same time. A high degree of refinement of SMED morphs into OTED ( One Touch Exchange of Die) which is the concept that says all setups should and can take les than 100 seconds!
It should be noted that while it is not mandatory that everyone achieve changeovers of less than 10 minutes, it is imperative that changeovers be reduced and the first priority is to get them to a level that puts your group closer to the Future State as dictated by your Implementation Plan. Some companies spend years and hundreds of thousand of dollars to improve changeovers only to find the rest of the process can't keep up. What has happened is that a point improvement has jammed up the system with a resultant cost increase and deterioration in the SMED improvement. SMED is to be part of the overall "Lean journey", not a "flavor of the day".
Remember that SMED is a cost reduction principle. Traditionally management took the cost of a product and added on a profit to arrive at a selling price. This is no longer the case in the modern economy where the customer/market place dictates the selling price and to increase or even maintain the profit level, the producer has to cut costs.
Thus cost + profit = selling price is replaced with selling price - costs = profit.
SMED exists and thrives outside the factory. The next time you see a race car do a pit stop, notice that many of the "changeover" operations are carried out in parallel, rather than sequentially as the home mechanic might do. Part of the externalizing of the activities, that may not be obvious, is that the lug nuts for the wheels are glued onto the wheel rim with a dab of crazy glue. This ensures there is no fumbling around trying to find a nut that has been taken off and then inserting it into the nut driver of a pneumatic wrench to install and tighten it. Seconds count!
Similarly, in a medical setting where patients queue for an MRI, if the patients change from street clothes to hospital garb ahead of their machine time, the changeover from one patient to the next is decreased. SMED is a critical tool and like all tools, it is important to apply it properly. It can be applied in the office, in healthcare, in manufacturing, or anywhere where there are different products or services being produced or developed with similar machines. When applied 'right', SMED can make the difference between profit and loss, and being able to meet the changing demands of your customer. It may be your competitive edge.