ABSTRACT
Many companies hire staff to conduct Single Minute (or digit) Exchange of Dies (SMED) events to reduce changeover downtime. The ideas on how to reduce their labor needed to come from the workers who did the tasks. If the ideas came from them, then they would own the change and be more willing to implement it. If the ReducedEffort Changeover (REC) process could reduce the changeover time of a machine where SMED had been applied, then it could reduce the changeover time of any machine. SMED had been applied to liquid filler with great success, and the plant personnel had continued to make improvements over the years. The key difference was that the REC system focused on reducing the effort, not the time, as SMED does. The operators who did the changeover on this liquid filler never saw their inconveniences as anything but annoyances or irritations.
