Reduce Changeover time:

Reducing changeover time is a process that will free up time for other uses. Management often wants to use this time to produce more goods. However, the rule of thumb is to use this newly available time to do more changeovers rather than more products. This increase in changeover has the potential to significantly reduce the lot size, which often has much larger benefits than the additional work time. In this blog look in more detail at this relation between changeover duration, productivity, and lot size.

The structured approach to reduce changeover time are:

1. Measure changeover times.

2. Identify internal and external elements.

3. Try to move as many elements as possible to external.

4. Shorten internal elements.

5. Shorten external elements.

6. Standardize and maintain new procedure.

Overall, If you reduce your changeover duration and put the gained benefits in more changeovers, then your inventory needed to cover the changeovers can be reduced by the same percentage that you reduced your changeover time.