That does not mean, however, that SMED should be the first priority. Virtually every manufacturing company that performs changeovers can benefit from SMED.

This section provides a step-by-step roadmap for a simple and practical SMED implementation. SMED ExampleĪn excellent way to learn more about SMED is to walk through an implementation example. These phases are performed in sequence and the entire sequence can be iterated (repeated). The SMED system has three major phases as shown above. The SMED process focuses on making as many elements as possible external and simplifying and streamlining all elements.

External Elements: elements that can be completed while the equipment is running.

Internal Elements: elements that must be completed while the equipment is stopped.

In SMED, changeovers are made up of steps that are termed “elements”. In fact, the journey from a 15-minute tire changeover to a 15-second tire changeover can be considered a SMED journey.

Many techniques used by NASCAR pit crews (performing as many steps as possible before the pit stop begins using a coordinated team to perform multiple steps in parallel creating a standardized and highly optimized process) are also used in SMED.

For a NASCAR pit crew, changing four tires takes less than 15 seconds.

For many people, changing a single tire can easily take 15 minutes.

His pioneering work led to documented reductions in changeover times averaging 94% (e.g., from 90 minutes to less than 5 minutes) across a wide range of companies.Ĭhangeover times that improve by a factor of 20 may be hard to imagine, but consider the simple example of changing a tire: SMED was developed by Shigeo Shingo, a Japanese industrial engineer who was extraordinarily successful in helping companies dramatically reduce their changeover times.

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