Set-up Reduction for Lean Cells and Multi-Machine Situations

Set-up reduction is a key requirement nowadays for many lean implementations. Current set-up reduction methodologies, most of them based on Shingo’s SMED, focus merely on simple one machine-one person situations, where as many value streams contain long multi-stage machine lines (e.g., in food industry) or multi-machine cells (e.g., in metal industry). In these situations, using SMED is not enough, one needs to look at reducing and optimizing all set-up activities across all available persons and machines. This paper presents a comprehensive approach for these situations (MMSUR) that yields very good results and that is easy to apply with any improvement team of operators. A real life case study will be used to illustrate the approach and the results.