Setup Time Reduction through SMED Technique in a Stamping Production Line

The competition in the current business world is marked by intense agitation and severe contention. This agitated situation has made organisations to revitalize themselves by marching in different routes like Agile, Lean, TPM, TQM etc to keep them competitive in the market as well to accomplish their objectives positively. Now a day's most of the organisations have taken the established route-Lean to crush the competition. This condition has improved the lean management strategies like, improving the value stream, reduce the change over times, creating flow in manufacturing, levelling the production based on demand; reducing capital investment etc. This concept has provided the organizations a major source of competitive advantage. The utilization of the source is mainly due to the capability of the organisation to change and manage the change.

In this study, a press shop which is used BMS press for the production of Hose clamps, which required set up time reduction and need to improve the productivity had been taken for project. The main objective is to reduce the set up time from 7 hours to 2 hours and improve the productivity. The objective needs to be achieved with no investment or with very minimum investment because investment plays a vital role at the growth stage of the product life cycle. The scope includes the BMS press the proposed implementation of new Toggle clamps, new “ZF” assembly, new camera mounting, SOP, etc. A seven step methodology used for set up time reduction to attain the objectives of the project.

The main results attained from the study are Tool change time had been reduced from 7 hours to 2 hours. This leads to the productivity improvement of the BMS machine, which can make 105000 clamps/day were before it was 60000 clamps/day. We conclude that modifying the existing practices has resulted in significant NVA elimination.