EQUIPMENT changeover times are important for many industries including the packaging industry. Time taken to changeover between product runs impacts on the chargeable time for any machine. While many companies have tried to reduce changeover times, many have never really known how to do it, according to
Lean manufacturing specialist, Bob Carter from Improvement Tools.com, was recently involved with a kaizen team reviewing a product change on a packaging line. The team was amazed to find that only 2 minutes and 40 seconds were actually required to change the line over, yet it took them 28 minutes to change from one product run to the next.
When the company analysed what had happened they found the operators travelled over 600 steps between them, retrieving material and parts (nearly 6 minutes each) and carried out a lot of tasks that could have been done prior to and after the changeover.
Effective changeovers can be carried out in less than 10 minutes and can significantly reduce the amount of scrap produced during initial set-ups and adjustment time.
The time to ‘make good product’ can be reduced and in some cases eliminated, making a real impact on material yield rates.
Remember that every minute saved from a changeover can be converted into additional value-adding time - time used to create and sell more product.
Tools used to improve changeover times and yield loss include the implementation of an Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEM) program, point-of-use storage for changeover items, quick-release fasteners and error-proof systems.
Improvement Tools.com, a Queensland based company, provides training, implementation support, do-it-yourself kits, books, DVDs to improve a company’s equipment changeovers.