In: Operations Management
A. SMED stands for Single-Minute Exchange of Dies and is an approach to significantly increase the up-time of machines. This is achieved by reducing the downtime of the machine by ensuring that as many steps in the changeover or setup are performed while the machine or the equipment is already running. The term "single-minute" means that all the change-over or the setup steps are completed in less than 10 minutes or single digit minutes. SMED classifies the steps to complete the changeover into 2 categories - internal elements and external elements. Internal elements are steps which need to be completed while the machine is stopped and external elements are the steps which need to be completed while the machine is working. SMED tries to make or transform as many steps as possible into external elements so that they can be completed while the machine is working so that the downtime of the machine is reduced to the maximum extent possible.