What are the benefits and challenges of smed in a high-mix, low-volume environment?

2 Why is SMED important for HMLV?

HMLV environments are characterized by high variability and low predictability in customer demand, product specifications, and process requirements. To avoid long lead times, high inventory levels, and low utilization rates, SMED can be used to enable faster and more frequent changeovers or setups. This can result in higher productivity and efficiency, as less time and resources are wasted on non-value-adding activities. Moreover, it can lead to higher quality and consistency, as well as greater flexibility and agility to adapt to different products, processes, or customers with minimal disruption or delay. Ultimately, this can also help increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, as the system can meet or exceed customer expectations in terms of delivery time, customization, and variety.

3 What are the challenges of SMED in HMLV?

Despite the potential benefits of SMED in HMLV, there are also some challenges that need to be addressed and overcome, such as increased complexity and variability due to an array of products, processes, and customers; higher skill and training needs for workers to be able to perform multiple tasks; increased coordination and communication needs among workers and other departments or stakeholders; and higher investment and maintenance needs for the system. All of these require workers to use different tools and methods, follow different standards and procedures, collaborate and share information, and require more equipment, tools, or materials or more frequent inspection, cleaning, or calibration.

4 How to implement SMED in HMLV?

To implement SMED in HMLV, a systematic and structured approach is recommended. You should analyze the current state of the changeover or setup process, using tools such as video recording, stopwatch, flowchart, or value stream map. Identify and classify the internal and external activities, using checklists, diagrams, or matrices. Then convert internal activities into external activities with methods such as standardization, simplification, parallelization, or elimination. Streamline the remaining internal activities with methods such as automation, integration, optimization, or innovation. Finally, monitor and improve the new state of the changeover or setup process with performance indicators, feedback, or audits.

5 How to measure SMED in HMLV?

To measure the effectiveness and efficiency of SMED in HMLV, several key metrics can be used. These include the total time required to switch from one product or process to another, the number of times a changeover or setup occurs in a given period, the total cost associated with performing a changeover or setup, the degree of conformity or deviation from the desired product or process specifications after a changeover or setup, and the ability to accommodate different products, processes, or customers with minimal changeover or setup time.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?