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Changeover times should not be obstacles in improving production flexibility.
Agile Supply Chains work on demand sensing at the front end and flexibility, responsiveness in backend operations. If a production line is a bottleneck, we must work on improving its flexibility.
I have often heard from production teams that getting this flexibility is not possible due to high changeover times. Since the same line produces multiple products, they keep changeovers to the minimum. Sounds familiar?
The benefits of flexibility are huge in terms of lower stockouts, fresher products and faster delivery to customers. Should changeovers come in the way?
SMED techniques come in handy to substantially reduce changeover times on any production line. Reduction of 50-90% is quite common.
If changeover is getting to be an obstacle, use SMED to overcome it.