SMED Case Study: Revitalizing Lean Manufacturing Focus
Client Background
An automotive supplier, after undergoing a merger, noticed a decline in Lean Manufacturing practices. The urgency of new product launches and daily customer demands overshawdowed the identification and elimination of waste in their plants.
Challenge
Post-merger, the company struggled with maintaining focus on Lean principles, resulting in inefficiencies and unrecognized waste. The leadership sought a solution to reignite Lean Manufacturing awareness and practices across their plants.
Solution
Leadership hired The Luminous Group, known for their expertise in Lean Manufacturing and team facilitation. The initiative began with a high-energy kickoff session involving plant managers and the operations VP. This session included a refresher on the 8 Types of Waste and a hands-on LEGO robot-building exercise to illustrate waste identification and elimination.
Implementation
With strong buy-in from operational leaders, the next phase involved conducting Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) workshops across ten Midwest plants. Cross-functional teams examined the die changeover processes on representative metal stamping presses, focusing on:
- Extracting – Removing unnecessary steps and actions
- Converting – Moving internal steps to external set-up steps
- Streamlining – Optimizing and simplifying the overall process
Results
The workshops yielded significant improvements:
- Initial average changeover time: 75 minutes
- Post-workshop average changeover time: 54 minutes (28% reduction)
- Average best changeover time at each plant: 39 minutes (48% reduction)
Each workshop concluded with detailed report-outs to management, where participants presented findings and actions. Unfinished actions were tracked and reviewed weekly, ensuring continuous progress towards reducing changeover times.
Ongoing Efforts
Teams remain committed to further reducing changeover times, continuously seeking and eliminating waste to enhance operational efficiency and productivity.
Conclusion
By partnering with The Luminous Group, the automotive supplier successfully revitablized its Lean Manufacturing focus, achieving substantial reductions in changeover times and setting a strong foundation for ongoing waste elimination and efficiency improvements.
