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AskLDI Case Studies – Component Production SMED

2022-04-25

We are a $40 million hydraulic component business company and our plant that produces cylinders to mobile equipment.

 

We had done a flow analyzes and found that a CNC machine was limiting our ability to produce the number of variants we needed. The set-up time was too long and the variation between operators around 100%.

 

Using a SMED process, our team (they are now Practitioner Certified) worked with the team of operators and followed parts of the SMED process. We chose to concentrate on two things.

  1. Training of operators
  2. Moving internal work to external work

 

We used an A3 sheet and worked for one week. We followed the PDCA approach to the focused areas and had Management visiting every morning to get support and to allow them to be informed. A detailed execution plan of the training for all shifts and replacement operators was finalized with sign off by the Management Team.   

 

We video filmed the set-up we chose to focus on and chose the most experienced operator to learn as a team, he also learned since some team members had a really good way of dealing with some tasks. We watched the video together and discussed the content and mad e the detailed plan together before developing One Point Lessons and started to train everyone.

 

After completion of the action plans, the machine set-up for the chosen set-up type was reduced with 53% and the variation was +/- 5%. We kept the follow up on our daily meeting board to. Make sure we hold the gains.