The SMED: A major key for the Lean Manufacturing Success
SMED or quick reference change
Although widely developed in the industrial environment (anybody has already practiced the SMED… or knows), the reason for being first is not always very understood and the potentials of this tool insufficiently exploited.
To realize it, you just have to ask the following question: « What is the SMED target? ».
In most of the case, the answer will be: « Reducing the tool change time to improve the production capacity ».
If in some specific cases, this answer seems to be exact, the SMED is first a tool for reducing the production batch sizes.
Batches smaller and smaller allow, for the same period, the manufacturing of any necessary references for the various Company customers and at the same time the decrease of the product stocks and consequently the Lead-time.
- Let us simply remind that the stock is not a necessary pain but an absolute pain. It hides the process sub-performances or weaknesses (no quality, no reliability, etc. and no flexibility).
By considering this absolute pain as an improvement opportunity, in the progressive implementation of the Just Necessary, the stock reduction becomes a real progress motor.
Implement the SMED in a long-wasting way is a necessary condition for the Just-necessary success (Lean Manufacturing).
