Application of SMED to reduce parameterization times in the production of corrugated carton packaging

Abstract

Companies are constantly enhancing their processes and operations to improve productivity while reducing costs. This has led many companies to implement a Lean Production philosophy. Lean Production involves a multi-level process to identify and prioritize the waste as non-value-adding activities, providing recommendations to reduce and/or eliminate them. This work was carried out in an industrial company dedicated to the production of corrugated carton boxes for several sectors, whereas, the main objective was the application of Lean Production principles and tools and to control setup times while minimizing the production cycle time. The production line under study corresponds to an automatic case-maker machine that converts cardboard plates into different box formats through automatic printing, cutting, slotting, creasing and collage processes. Each production order requires a specific parametrization process, which consumes a considerable amount of time and human resources. Thus, a time study was carried out to identify all the operations, controls, stops and movements through sequence diagrams. With the collected data, the SMED tool was applied to reduce the setup times of the case makers. With the application of SMED, it was possible to reduce the setup time by 28% for production orders with cutting tools and 39.6% for production orders without cutting tools. With this analysis, the company can release one of the three operators at the automatic production line to perform other value-added operations.