From the course: Lean Inventory Management
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Single-minute exchange of die
From the course: Lean Inventory Management
Single-minute exchange of die
- Shigeo Shingo is considered the world's leading expert on the Toyota production system. In fact, he developed several of the lean principles used by Toyota today. And one of his most significant contributions is called Single-Minute Exchange of Die, or SMED for short. The term exchange of die addresses changeover time, which is the time it takes to change a machine from making one product to making a different product. In making automobile parts, for example, this changeover or set-up time can be many hours or even several days because large, precision-molded die must be replaced in heavy machinery. Most people would think that reducing set-up time to one minute is simply impossible, but that's not what Mr. Shingo intended. He defined single minute as less than 10. Single digit exchange of die is actually a better description of his idea, but even that is an ambitious target. In practice, the goal of SMED is to continuously improve the process so that changeover time is as low as…
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