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Quick Changeover for Operators:
The SMED System |
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Author: Productivity Press Development Team
The powerful knowledge contained in this book can make your workplace more
productive, your job simpler, and everything more satisfying. It's about how
to do equipment or product changeovers in record time--often in less than 10
minutes. The method you'll learn here is called SMED, short for
"Single-Minute Exchange of Die" (the "single" here means a single-digit
number of minutes).
Quick Changeover for Operators was developed from a longer book, A
Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System, written for managers. But when
you get right down to it, you--the frontline production and assembly
associates--are the ones who'll be most involved in implementing the SMED
approach--and also the ones who'll most benefit from it. We've developed
this book specifically to give you the SMED basics in a straightforward and
interesting format. Once you understand these basics, you'll be able to see
how they might apply to your specific situation at work.
This book presents an overview of the reasons why SMED is important for
companies and employees, sets out the three basic stages of SMED, and then
devotes a separate chapter to each of these stages. The first chapter of the
book is like an "owner's manual" that tells you how to get the most out of
your reading time by using the margin assists, summaries, and other features
of the book to help you pull out exactly what you need.
One of the most effective ways to use this book is to read and discuss it
with other employees. We've deliberately planned the book so that it can be
used this way--by organizing the book into chunks of information that can be
covered in a series of short session or in one longer event. (Most chapters
can be covered in a single session; Chapter 5 and 6 contain a lot of
samples, and each should probably be covered in two sessions.) Each chapter
includes reflection questions to stimulate group discussion. A Learning
Package is also available, which includes a leader's guide, overhead
transparencies to summarize major points, and color slides showing examples
of SMED applications in different kinds of companies.
So what's SMED?
Quick changeovers are critical for any company wanting to practice
just-in-time or one-piece flow manufacturing, since models may be rapidly
switched and unneeded inventory may be avoided. SMED reduces difficult,
time-consuming, and wasteful activities in your company, which ultimately
supports your company's competitiveness and makes your own work much easier.
The SMED system you'll learn in this book is the most effective approach for
shortening changeover time.
The SMED approach is actually quite simple and universal. Companies all over
the world practice it. First used in (and named for) manufacturing with
dies, SMED's basic principles have helped reduce setup and turnaround time
in all types of manufacturing, assembly, and even service industries.
SMED is really about observing, thinking, and acting on changeover. You
observe how things are done presently, you think about and note how the
situation can be improved, and then you try to work on how the necessary
setup work can be done in the shortest possible downtime.
ORDER CODE: PP-1257
BOOK
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