Lean manufacturing tool - SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies)Dr. Shingo in the process of creating the Toyota production system solved one of the major issues any system faced. Problem was the inability of changing between different styles or designs quickly. This took days of time. In this changeover period, they couldn’t produce anything. So this eventually means loss of production for days and extending the lead-time. Some of the causes for this problem are, machinery designed to operate continuously in larger batches, not planning for the changeover, mind set of the people etc. Dr. Shingo understood the problem accurately and developed SMED system to overcome the problem. By using machinery which are easy to setup, machines which operated in small batches and organized approach in changeovers produced great results. SMED technique reduced the changeover time from days to hours and to minutes. This imparted lean manufacturing systems a great flexibility and shorter lead-times. This is one of the major reasons why good lean manufacturers are competitive on their lead times. They are also competitive on manufacturing small batches. Obviously this is why Toyota is so powerful in the market |
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