The Use of SMED in Engineering Manufacturing

Abstract

To survive in such an increasingly competitive world, there is a need of continuous improvement in every type of industry. An answer to these challenges for manufacturing companies is the implementation of lean concepts. The importance of short changeover times, SMED, has always been critical for manufacturing companies. It is one of the many lean production methods for reducing waste in the manufacturing process. It's a quick and effective way adjustment process of the actual product to another product. The practical part is focused on usage of SMED in manufacturing. Project was realized in engineering company oriented on machining heavy products. Separating time to external and internal we saved about 10% of total production time. The result is proposal timetable of standard changeover process. Also timetable of two pieces in batch, because insertion two pieces in the batch reduced the total time of production. Total time was reduced of two changeovers.

Revitalising the setup reduction activities in Operations Management

“…Furthermore, the paper informs the findings in managerial language to assist practitioners to solve practical problems regarding productivity issues at the operations level. The importance of reducing the setup times has always been fundamental for manufacturing companies (Mihok et al, 2015). In our opinion, it will remain so for quite some time, as it is a critical aspect for reducing productivity wastes increasing gains in manufacturing processes.…”

“…Furthermore, as part of today's highly globalised and volatile markets, industries face enormous challenges such as implementing actions to remain competitive and seeking differentiation to stand out from competitors (Mihok et al, 2015;Cas et al, 2015;Antunes et al, 2008).…”

“…The shorter equipment changeover time, the smaller the production lot can be, resulting in higher production effectiveness (Silva and Godinho Filho, 2019;Antunes et al, 2013;Cakmakci, 2009;Neumann and Ribeiro, 2004). Reductions in setup time can be attained via SMED when the equipment changeover time is reduced (Mihok et al, 2015). Accordingly, production systems that successfully implement SMED benefit from lower manufacturing costs and inventory levels and better response to customer demands (Lozano et al, 2019;Dave and Sohani, 2012).…”