A Brief Overview On SMED

Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) is a manufacturing principle that’s practiced by many top companies and corporations. Also known as Quick Changeover, it’s a practice that aims to significantly reduce down time in plants and factories. The resulting streamlined operations of the participating facilities can significantly reduce company costs, increase production output and improve employee work rate.

The concept was first developed in the late 1940’s by a man named Shigeo Shingo. In 1950, it was adopted by Toyota as part of their Lean Manufacturing policy in order to cut costs. The program has proven so effective that it is still in use today more than six decades later.

While it contains the term “singe minute” in its name, successful implementation of SMED does not require a literal adherence to a sixty second time limit for changeovers. The real goal is to minimize the gap between the production of the last good part and the next good part. Anything under ten minutes, especially when the changeover involves heavy machinery, is generally considered to be a success.

Companies interested in adopting the principles themselves can easily do so if they wished. There are many third party firms who provide education and expertise on Quick Changeover techniques both for the management team as well as the firm’s regular employees. They generally use industry-approved tools like SMED Game Simulations and a formalized SMED presentation in order to quickly get their clients up to speed.

Used in conjunction, a good SMED presentation module, combined with well-made simulation, can swiftly familiarize and train company workers on SMED. The two programs are designed to work together, with half being responsible for imparting the theory while the games provide a safe venue for practice application and experimentation.

A complete SMED presentation and simulation run aims to achieve four main goals. First, organizers have to be able to adequately communicate the core concepts of a Single Minute Exchange of Die operation to the workers. Furthermore, attendees must learn how to differentiate between the external and internal elements of the process. Employees must then be given a chance to practice what they learned in a workshop environment. Finally, the principles have to be implemented on the factory floor itself.