ReducedEffort® Changeover: The Lean Way to Quickly Reduce Changeover Downtime provides a step-by-step guide for conducting a Kaizen event that empowers the people who do the work to improve how that work is done. Packed with tips, tools, and examples, this practical guide begins with a clear description of the Lean principles underlying the ReducedEffort Changeover system. In addition, it explains how and why reducing the effort always reduces the time of converting a machine, line, or process from one product to another. In this book, you’ll find everything you need to quickly and dramatically reduce the effort and time of any process using the ReducedEffort method. This is not another book about how to do SMED. Like SMED, ReducedEffort Changeover (REC) does reduce changeover time, but REC is not SMED. SMED, Single Minute (or digit) Exchange of Dies, developed by Dr. Shigeo Shingo, has been the process used for many years by countless manufacturing plants to reduce changeover time. The SMED process was used in Toyota to reduce the changeover of a 1,000-ton stamping press from four hours to three minutes. As a Lean-based process, the REC system focuses on reducing the labor, not the time, involved in changing over a machine to work on a different product. With REC, there are no Standard Operation Combination Sheets to fill out and no Problem Identification Sheets to complete, and it does not require the arduous chore of timing every task, as SMED does. Very little capital investment is required with REC. Unlike SMED, it does not require management-approved funding to achieve substantial results. Because REC is not capital-driven, management does not need to drive the process. The operators will drive the process because it reduces their labor. One of the biggest advantages of REC over SMED is that operators will readily accept the process, and more important, they will want to sustain it. The reason for this is quite simple and will become evident when the REC process is defined. REC takes SMED to a new level that is easier and faster both to implement and to deliver sustainable results.

Improving Changeover Performance is essential reading for managers, engineers and improvement practitioners working in manufacturing industries. It will also prove invaluable to original equipment manufacturers and postgraduates and academic researchers alike. Increasing importance is being placed on responsive, flexible manufacture in multi-product industrial environments. The ability to changeover production facilities both quickly and to a high standard is a key component of just-in-time and lean manufacturing paradigms, which are increasingly being adopted as businesses strive to compete in today's volatile and congested markets. Currently industry frequently adopts the SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) system, a well-established shop floor method to improve changeovers. This book takes a major step beyond the SMED system, by describing in much greater detail than hitherto the potential role of engineering design, of both substantive and non-substantive nature, to enhance changeovers. It also clearly sets out what better changeover performance can contribute to business competitiveness, and describes the many pitfalls that an improvement initiative can face. - Provides overall methodology for changeover improvementIncorporates design into SMED system - Recommended by the IMechE Journal of Engineering Manufacture

This book covers the basics of setup reduction and quick changeover and data collection. It outlines the first pass of waste reduction through the implementation of the visual workplace and layout improvements. The book covers two quick changeover concepts: intermediate tooling and one-turn methods.

Written by the industrial engineer who developed SMED (single-minute exchange of die) for Toyota, A Revolution in Manufacturing provides a full overview of this powerful just in time production tool. It offers the most complete and detailed instructions available anywhere for transforming a manufacturing environment in ways that will speed up produ

Manufacturing in the United States is currently undergoing a major transition, yet large numbers of manufacturers simply do not recognize what it is all about. Many still operate under out dated manufacturing practices and do not see that the enemy is not the competition, but rather their own system of production.

This textbook is a concise introduction to the essential concepts and tools used in the "Lean" method of improving business processes; it constitutes a sufficient "toolkit" to enable a reader to successfully improve business processes in their workplace. While Lean was first applied in manufacturing, arguably evolving out of the Toyota Production System, it is now applied widely to service and administrative processes as well. Lean, in comparison with other business improvement processes such as Six Sigma, relies on intuitive concepts rather than complex mathematics. Thus, a short, non-technical, understandable, and engaging text can successfully convey the essential principles of Lean and empower the reader. Besides describing the concepts of Lean, plentiful examples and brief case studies illustrate the application of Lean in different contexts including manufacturing, healthcare, food service, administrative processes, distribution, and retail. Besides giving a clear idea of how to apply Lean in various contexts, the examples illustrate which Lean tools are most appropriate in the various contexts. This book focuses on "how" to do Lean in terms of what the Lean tools are and how to apply them. What this book is not is an in-depth coverage of other organizational issues associated with the successful implementation of Lean. Because these issues are important, very brief coverage is included in the Section/Chapter entitled "Other Considerations in Lean." Each subsection in this chapter would be extremely brief and would outline the relevant issues, but in no way would thoroughly discuss these topics. References would be included here for those readers who wish to pursue future study in this area.

This book is a concise introduction to the essential concepts and tools used in the Lean method for improving business processes. It constitutes a sufficient toolkit to enable practitioners to quickly start using Lean to improve business processes in their workplace. Alternatively, it can also serve as a textbook in undergraduate or master’s programs. This book succinctly describes the benefits of Lean in manufacturing, sales, administration, distribution, health care, and other industries, as well as providing a step-by-step description of how Lean is applied.