Senior managers contemplating using the Lean tool SMED / Quick Changeover often ask "What's the payoff? After all, the operating guys will be doing almost the same amount of work." To say that is skepticism over the benefits of SMED / Quick Changeover is akin to saying an iceberg is just an oversized ice cube.

The act of learning, applying, and retaining the SMED / Quick Changeover methodology causes a change in the way a changeover is viewed. This change is an essential building block of making Lean Management part of the culture of the enterprise. In effect, Lean becomes part of the company DNA.

By having a cross-functional team methodically review a changeover and separate work elements into internal and external work elements, the understanding of what is really being done in the changeover comes to light. The team members "learn to see" the changeover from a new perspective. A streamlining of the separated work elements aimed at eliminating non-required steps ensures non-value added waste is removed.

When the remaining elements are arranged in a new logical sequence, the resulting time, when the operation is shut down for changeover, is typically 50% of the pre- SMED time. Technicians don't work harder. They carry out the external elements either before or after the process is stopped for the changeover. The internal elements become the time the process is actually not producing. The reduced changeover from the last good piece of the old part to the first good piece of the new part is a fraction of the pre - SMED time.

A recent SMED Quick Changeover workshop resulted in the elimination of an hour of machine downtime per shift for multiple changeovers for the highly automated silk screening of CD labels. The savings were annualized as "millions in the first year". During the Enterprise Value Stream MappingTM (EVSM)TM of their "order entry to product shipped" process, the client recognized a need to reduce changeover time in order to provide more machine capacity with reduced inventories to meet customer demand. The SMED workshop was a Kaizen event which addressed that competitive requirement by utilizing Lean techniques. Similarly a SMED / Quick Changeover workshop involving a plastic extrusion process resulted in a 66% reduction in die changeover time and a 27% reduction in downstream process changeover time after only 2 days. The streamlining of the process steps would generate additional savings. These are "drop thru" savings that go right to the bottom line much to the joy of accountants and managers.

An example in the non-manufacturing environment, Healthcare, is in the MRI operations within a hospital. Most administrations are struggling with how to reduce wait times (and of course costs) for MRI patients. The first solution they jump to is, to buy more equipment which includes expensive MRI's. This solution, on the surface, seems to be appropriate and it is certainly the easiest and fastest - or is it? As you investigate further and begin planning for new equipment you realize that you need more space, more trained people to operate the equipment and more supplies - the result is that the initial cost of buying the equipment was only the tip of the iceberg. The real solution should have been to analyze the entire process from the time the patient arrives for their MRI to the point they leave and determine how much time and activities are 'waste'. When this is done, we find much of the time is classified as waste and one of the wastes is the time to set up in between each patient.

With the use of SMED, the change over time is drastically reduced and there is an opportunity to put more patients through the process without adding staff, space or equipment and it didn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The answer to the question "what's the payoff?" is a healthier bottom line, increased flexibility to meet customers ever changing needs, empowered workers doing world class changeovers, less inventory and its associated problems, less floor space due to less product or equipment on the floor, and "found" capacity resulting from a process operating instead of being down for non-value added changeovers.

In today's world, the pressure is on organizations and businesses to provide products and services (such as healthcare) faster and better but at the same cost or lower. In order to meet the clients and customers challenging expectations and desire for more, faster and better, you must consider proper implementation of every tool that can improve your processes and give you an advantage over your competitors. SMED / Quick Changeover is one of those tools that can give you and your group a much needed advantage and the results of implementing it are immediate.