Quick Changeover Consulting: Reduce Changeover Time Up to 10X

Like a race car driver who finds no value in spending time in a pit stop, resources (machines, trucks, and highly skilled people) add no value when they are shut down for changeover.

Every minute of downtime is a minute you could be producing for customers, delivering product to customers, or providing service – Adding Value. Reducing set-up or changeover time to the absolute minimum is therefore critical in Lean manufacturing, Lean warehouse, Lean construction, Lean healthcare, or any Lean enterprise.

Reducing changeover is called many different things (“Single Minute Exchange of Dies or the SMED system”, “Quick Changeover for Lean Manufacturing”, “Mold Set Reduction” or “Set-Up Reduction”), but the process is fundamentally the same.

The goal is to identify the minimum number of steps that must happen while the resource (machine, truck, IT system) is shut down, and to execute those steps as quickly as possible. This shutdown time is referred to as Internal Set-Up Time or Internal Activities.

Why Reducing Changeover Time is Important in Manufacturing, Distribution, Construction, Car Repair, Healthcare, and More

Quick changeover has been strongly identified with Lean Manufacturing, and the time from making one product to the time to the next product is coming off the production line, meeting all product quality tests. Changeover process steps are focused on production equipment and machinery.

Tooling that can simplify and mistake-proof machine set-up is often the highest level of Quick Changeover improvements. The goal is to shorten manufacturing lead time and reduce to smaller lot sizes aligned with customer order quantities

However, Lean Thinking and the use of Lean Six Sigma are much broader and important to so many different types of organizations.

Lean warehouses seek to get trucks in and out of the dock doors as fast as possible, to unload and load trucks faster. Internal activities are getting the product off and onto trucks. External activities are all the paperwork needed to receive and load vehicles, such as receiving documents and bills of lading.

Lean transportation companies want to keep their vehicles on the road, in the water, or in the air. They want to reduce vehicle downtime. Southwest Airlines benchmarked car racing pit crews, not other airlines, to reduce their gate time. They worked to eliminate waste in boarding and cleaning by enlisting the entire crew, including pilots.

Lean construction companies know their most expensive resource is often the tradespeople, not equipment. Any time they don’t have the tools, equipment, and materials they need to do the job, it is lost time and increased cost. They want to reduce people downtime.

Car repair shops try to keep cars on the lift to ensure their highly skilled technicians are always working on a vehicle. External changeover steps include having the tools and parts available to the technician when they get the car up on the lift.

Lean healthcare works to keep doctors focused on the most valuable aspects of patient care (internal elements), leaving technicians and nurses to do the rest of the patient care work (external activities). Operating rooms are just like car racing pit stops, with the doctor being synonymous with the driver and the technicians and nurses being like the pit crew.

We follow the four main steps of the Quick Changeover (SMED) Methodology:

1. Measure: We will collect changeover data through time studies and spaghetti mapping the current state of set-ups. We have found that when teams are engaged in time studies and spaghetti mapping, they generate great ideas for improvements. In addition, some of the data-gathering effort will come from production performance metrics such as operating equipment efficiency (OEE) and first pass yield.
2. Separate: We will review each time element in the current state setup process. We identify if it is value-added or non-value-added, and if it is an external activity or an internal activity. This phase will generate a list of “Great Ideas” and highlight potential non-value-added time elements that can be quickly eliminated.
3. Remove: During this critical step, internal activities (happening while the machine is off) will be evaluated to see if they can be converted using pre-staged fixtures and quick clamp mechanisms to external activities (happening while the machine is running). A formal set-up procedure, based on what elements of the set-up will be external and internal, will be developed, practiced, and tested.
4. Streamline: Based upon the testing of our procedures, we will work to implement additional actions and create a streamlined setup process. Updates will be made as needed and documented. Once we have fine-tuned that procedure, we can launch it across the organization and measure results to boost productivity.

The use of set-up scheduling optimization to create a product wheel that will reduce the need for changeover (or cleanout), will lead to the final phase of the Quick Changeover project. We will work with planning to develop set-up scheduling guidelines for all resources to further reduce changeover times through sequencing.

The Importance of 5S Visual Management and Kanban

In the streamlining step mentioned above, 5S and Kanban are fundamental capabilities and tools to make this happen.

5S Visual Management ensures that tools are available (often labeled on pegboards), information in the system is supported by training tools such as video playbooks (the 4th S – Standardization), and movable equipment such as carts, forklifts, and pallet jacks are in their designated parking spots.

Kanban is a visual inventory management system that makes sure the materials used in the process are always available, that there is an external activity to replenish this stock, so the machine operator, driver, doctor, or tradesperson does not cause downtime retrieving this material.

Doing Quick Changeover as a Kaizen Event

Quick Changeover is often implemented as a kaizen, or rapid improvement event. Kaizens accelerate the improvement step into a few days or usually less than one week. However, it is important for all Lean practitioners to know that much of the data gathering to support a kaizen event happens in the weeks prior.

Time studying and spaghetti mapping the different types of products/vehicles/operations going through the resource cannot be done in a week. However, once the data is gathered, a rapid improvement event is a great way to implement focused improvements that changeovers enable, such as moving some internal to external elements.

Performance Measurement – The Key to Quick Changeover Sustainment

The last, and often overlooked, step of Quick Changeover is ensuring your key performance measurement system includes measures directly impacted by the improvements.

The most frequently used measure is OEE – operating equipment efficiency, which is a utilization metric. This is common in manufacturing but less so in other service industries. Regardless, if the resource is important, the utilization of that resource must be measured to ensure you are continually optimizing performance and efficiency.

Supply Velocity can help you with all aspects of Quick Changeover (SMED) implementation, from training to facilitating the kaizen event to setting up performance scorecards.

Ask us your Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, or Supply Chain question.

We’re the experts! We’ll get back within 48 hrs. with a valuable response.