Improving setup time in a Press Line – Application of the SMED methodology

Abstract

The market environment in which companies are included nowadays has dramatically changed with the reduction of tax barriers, which consequently increased the competitiveness. Competing in an international market is now a reality for all enterprises and in consequent, the effect of globalization is even more felt. Therefore, companies have once again to gather efforts and reduce their production costs through waste elimination and productivity increase.SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die), a tool created by Shigeo Shingo allows waste reduction in productive processes, making it more efficient and flexible. This approach proposes waste elimination through the reduction of non-production time in each machine, more precisely, the reduction of the time needed for tool change in a machine (or setup time). Its application has a special incidence in the automotive sector and in the plastic industry. In this article, SMED will be apply to a press line in the automotive industry in which the use of a Gantt chart in SMED's time study will be proposed in order to consider parallelism between operations.