THE APPLICATION OF SMED METHOD IN THE INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

Abstract

The production process fluency is often interrupted by idle time. A significant proportion of individual idle times is caused by changeover. Trends, such as the individualization of requirements, the constant effort to meet the customers’ requirements on time and the maintaining of the production process fluency at low costs, are aimed at eliminating idle time. In terms of contradictory goals such as individualization of customer requirements, which is reflected in the high variability of production / products and minimalization of the production time and its fluency, it is necessary to pay increased attention to the changeover process. The problem related to the changeover process can be solved in two ways: by reducing the number of changeovers (reducing production variability and achieving dissatisfaction with individual customer requirements) or by shortening the changeover time (while maintaining production variability and ability to satisfy a wide range of individual customer requirements). The Single-Minute Exchange of Die - SMED method is used to shorten the time duration of the changeover process and eliminate waste in the given process. The aim of the paper is to apply the SMED method in vibration welder changeover process in a selected industrial enterprise and thus achieve a shortening of the changeover process. The SMED method was applied in the enterprise which belongs to the group of small and medium-sized enterprises. The research method was indirect observation via video recording and time snap. Various types of waste were identified based on the analysis, and subsequently eliminated by proposed rationalization measures. Finally, the time duration of the changeover process before the analysis and after the implementation of rationalization measures was compared.