Single Minutes Exchange of Die (SMED)

Increasingly diverse customer demands and changes quickly according to the characteristics of personality and lifestyle to improve the productivity.

circumstances cause a changeover or exchange dies and production system with a large size lot more attention to production manager. Time and high changeover activities will reduce high levels of productivity. Large lot size will increase the cost of inventory.

Many production managers who start implementing SMED (single minute Exchange of Die). SMED is a method to accelerate the replacement of equipment or product. SMED target is to reduce the turnover time under 10 minutes or one digit.

SMED system success example is the success of Toyota in down time replacement (set up) the process of stamping from 4 hours to 3 minutes. And also electrical equipment industry in U.S. that successfully reduce the replacement casting process from 50 minutes to 3 minutes.

Economic crisis at this time cause the decrease in market demand and the market is increasingly of market segmentation, so the production system is more flexible with replacement time that low and fast, is one of the key of problem-solving, if don't or it will bankrupt.