SMED - Single Minute Exchnage of Dies

Well, it has been awhile but a lot of things can happen in a short time!

Which is precisely what we decided to talk about when Eva and I finally met up again! In this case though, she wanted a lot of things to happen in a short time - as in let's reduce the time it takes to do changeovers from one line-up to another.

What she was taking about is called SMED or, single minute exchange of dies. It goes like this. The carton packaging equipment (cartoner) is going to go from packaging a 250 ml milk carton to packaging a 500 ml chocolate milk carton. In order to do so, there are many things that have to happen, starting with line flushes, labeller changes, carton changes etc. The goal of SMED is to reduce the time it takes to make all these changes, thereby decreasing waste, increasing flexibility and increasing profits.

Using SMED is basically a 4 step process:

Step 1 - determine all the steps associated with the changeover, including all prep work and all clean up work and outline them in the order they currently occur.

Step 2 - assign each step as being internal (can only be done when equipment is down, or in time between product runs) or external (can be done offline, before or after the change and not during)

Step 3 - change the order of the steps so that all the external steps occur first (or last) and the internal steps occur second.

Step 4 - reduce the time it takes to do either certain steps or to do all steps.

Simple right! That's what Eva thought and for the most part it was. It just required us getting people to look at their work differently. Some steps did take a little imagination though and some change management but at the end of the day the changeover time dropped 50%, bumping up production quite significantly!