Track: Lean Six Sigma

Abstract

In today’s highly competitive world, industries are forced to find ways to survive by increasing efficiency and reducing costs.  As one of several industries that are facing the challenges, the printing industry is threatened by competitions both among companies in the industry and technological threats like multimedia, e-books, etc., leading to the reduction in sales prices, higher competitions, and lower demands. This accentuates the need for companies to cut costs and improve productivity.  The concept of Lean Manufacturing revolves around reducing wastes.  Reduction of wastes can lead to significant increase in productivity and reduction in costs.  Thus, Lean manufacturing is one of the techniques that can potentially be applied to provide means for companies in the industry to survive.  This research studies the analysis of setup time reduction of a printing process using a lean concept called Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED).   Main strategy for SMED involves identifying setup activities, trying to convert the internal activities to external activities, and reducing activity times.  The analyses of setup activities are conducted and a methodology to reduce standard setup time is presented.  Although data used in this research pertain to the company used as a case study, the approach can be applied to a printing process in general.