As a career contract/consulting engineer I have worked for many companies at various stages of their Lean journey. One thing that puzzles me is that one company will include SMED in its conversion and another ignores it. I would like to ask the forum if there is a good business reason for this.
My experience tells me that most companies that ignore SMED as part of a lean transformation do so because it's most often the most difficult "lean tool" to apply. 5S, visual controls, work cells, kanban/pull systems, VSM,POUS, and others. SMED requires several ongoing kaisen events and uses, visual controls, VSM, 5S, POUS, quality@source, teams, layout, pul/kanban (many times) and cellular methods. Capital equipment is most often the most costly process and downtime when there is demand is not productive, to counter this companies justify long wetups with large batch sizes, this only creates more:waste, inventory, late deliveries, defects. I often start with SMED and by achieving results quickly transformation inm other areas becomes that much easier. Just start, video tape last good piece of one run to first good piece of the next run, view the video with a cross functional team, separate internals from externals, convert internals to exteranls, streamline both internals and externals and do it over and over again. After awhile SMED will be natural and won't require formal events but daily continuous improvements as part of the culture.
When a company doesn't have adequate visibility of its losses, and no informations about its potential, to apply any methodology will be always considered as a non value activities.
Long setups exist because the man in the corner office allows them to exist. When he charges his team with eliminating setups it will happen.
Of course it is the responsibility of the man in the corner office to provide the tools to get the job done. One tool is money to make the required upgrades and changes, another is to hand every employee a book on SMED. I suggest "Quick Changeover for Operators - The SMED System" - I got them on Amazon. Finally, and this one is the toughest - support and encourage change and improvement. Every boss wants improvement, but as often as not, the biggest reisistance to change can be found at the top.
Set-ups may or may not be an issue for an operations, so SMED may or may not be necessary. (This is more a comment for the "lean things" crowd, as opposed to people really doing lean.)
Opposed to an opinion above, SMED is quite easy. Balancing a line, setting stock levels in a supermarket and doing EPEI/ Heijunka is difficult (to do correctly).
I'd recommend Shingo's book on SMED...you might as well learn it from the Master!
What I see is a reaction by many CFOs unfamiliar with “LEAN” principles, application, and the true potential LEAN can bring an organization.
Many CFOs labor under the belief that specialized equipment is too costly to purchase. After all, if a machine change over is less than 3 hours, what's the big deal?
Management would rather spend less money to acquire less versatility than to pay for a more costly machine that may cut down on the change over costs. Besides, if they buy versatility, their standards are no longer valid; and they will have to develop new standards and everyone knows how difficult it is to set new standards, right?
Well, the question reminds me of a story that one of my mentors taught me years ago.
Three people engaged in manufacturing all of their lives died and met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter looked up their lives in the “Book of Life” and said, "You were all pretty good but not good enough, so here is the deal. You can enter Heaven but to get there, you have to move only 1/2 way with each movement. The alternative is to return to earth and live there in poverty for 75 years."
The accountant though for a moment and said, "Clearly, I will never get there, I'll take the alternative.” BOOM, he went to earth.
The next fellow, a mechanical engineer said, "The accountant was right, I will never get there, I'll take the alternative.” BOOM, he went to earth.
The last man was a plant manager, who said, "In theory, I can never get there but in actuality, I can get close enough so that it won't matter." Boom, he went to heaven.
The plant manager was the only person to think of what would happen at the ‘END’ of his journey. The other individuals’ focused on the journey.
Not too many C-level folks think long range. There is little reward for deploying long-range plans and our culture rewards us in the short term!
CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CIOs, receive compensation for this year and not for what will happen in 3, 4, 7, or 10 years down the road. If you reward for the short term, expect to see short-term results.
To affect a change the reward system must change. Change the reward system and see what happens! This tenant is a direct outgrowth of LEAN. Change the reward system to change the effects, in other words, to get folks to see the walls, don't paint lines on the floor! - That's my catch phrase.
What I have seen in my 12 years as a Manufacturing Engineer and Continuous Improvement Professional is when SMED is not implemented on equipment, there are some common scenarios. The most common scenario I have seen is when it is a highly precision part for aerospace/defense that requires a long/complex first article inspection. The inspection section of the setup may be much longer than the actual setup time. This seems to happen especially in highly regulated insutries. Sometimes, the inspection can be setup and ready to check the first part off the equipment in an effective and efficient manner, but not often. Many times the quality inspector is the constraint, alternatively speciall equipment such as CMM's might be the constraint.
I have also seen this in a system that requires destructive or cross sectioning of weld processes. Again the inspection takes longer than the setup.
Nine years ago, my team created $3.6 Million in production time annually by implementing SMED as part of a throughput improvement project. It is extremely powerful and can take an hour or two hour setup to less than 10 minutes.
Also I have increased productivity by 10% by creating machining cells and using incremental setups. Traditional setups have tremendous amounts of waste in them, they should always be reviewed. However, they may not be able to be changed at that time.
The only good business sense for not taking smed is that you have only one product to ever produce. You wouldn't need smed if a machine has its entire life dedicated to making one part 5 days a week.
Other than that, yes, I agree that change is difficult to manage, and therefore most businesses that do not move towards smed simply have management that is afraid of and unable to manage change.
An SMED Question
Linear Mode
