Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) is a way of working, that helps decreasing time and quality losses by maintenance of the machine or switching designs.

When to use

Single Minute Exchange of Dies is something that has to be kept in mind when making production machines. It is also applicable to existing production machines.

Single Minute Exchange of Dies is used:

to reduce downtime

Description

Within the SMED-method there are seven step to reduce downtime: 

1. Observe the existing method

2. Separation of internal and external ("off line") activities. Internal activities can only be performed when the machine is stopped. External activities can be performed while the machine is in production

3. Convert internal activities to external activities

4. Streamline the remaining internal activities by making them more simple

5. Streamline the external activities

6. Document the new procedure, also describe future actions

7. Repeat this method. Every iteration of this is expected to have an improvement of 45%.