Lean Production. S Reduce Changeover Time

Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) is the precondition of a leveling production in a multi-species with small quantity manufacturing company. It is one of the key technique of implementing lean production and it is also the best solution of reducing changeover time. Generally, in a manufacturing site, a 95% of the total lead time comes from WIP and kinds of waiting time including the changeover time. It is very important to reduce the changeover time relentlessly in order to response to customer requirements as quick as possible.In S company, after the implementation of Lean Production for a period of time, a realistic situation was:too long changeover time on the bottleneck machines affected production flow, leading to low machine efficiency, long lead time, also impacted the capacity increasing. With the value stream analysis and Single Minute Exchange of Die technique, the project team made a tear down of the changeover process on bottleneck machines, moved internal changeover activities to external ones, including a new way of executing external changeover activities which is the set-up people complete their tasks of external changeover in a Mini crib. The bottleneck machines'changeover time reduced 40%-70% in each manufacturing line, at the same time, reduced the production lead time, increased the overall equipment effectiveness, capacity and revenue. The results of the study provide an example and instructive revelation of changeover time reduction activities in a company of multi-species with small quantity.