Some history

As various Lean Manufacturing tools, the SMED is born in the Toyota competitive Universe, under S. Shingo impulse. This last one underlines the key role of the series change time in the global industrial flexibility.

Industrial context

The customer increasing requirements impose our industries to offer more and more diversified and innovative products.

The consequences of the market evolution are on one hand an exponential increase of the reference number, and on the other hand a greater obsolescence risk.
The industrial problematics is always to have in due time products the customer needs, while minimizing the obsolescence risk.
In other words, it is a question of producing Just-in-Time - either by quickly answering to any customer request without needing a huge stock.
Batch size reduction, flexibility increase and stock reduction become the inescapable of any effective and successful industrial organization.
This is only possible with the single condition to control the reference change times, this control can be obtained by using the SMED method.

Some definitions

- S.M.E.D.: « Single Minute Exchange of Die », that is in French « Changement de série en moins de 10 min » is an organizing method which tries to reduce in a systematic way the series change time, with a quantified objective. (Standard AFNOR NF X50-310).

- Series change: All the necessary operating to modify a machine configuration (or a production line) to change a batch production (n) in a batch production (n+1).

- Series change time: Time between the manufacturing of the last good product from the batch n and the manufacturing of the first good product of the batch ( n+1 ), in series conditions.

Practical targets - Thanks to the creation of a working team and the KAIZEN spirit development (continuous improvement), the « SMED method » will allow you to quickly reduce without major investments your series change times.-40 and even 50% of the benefits will be first obtained thanks to the series change organization and to the task simplification.