ABSTRACT
Setup operations were actually of two fundamentally different types: Internal setup and External setup. Setup procedures are usually thought of as infinitely varied, depending on the type of operation and the type of equipment being used. The most important step in implementing Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) is distinguishing between internal and external setup. SMED is a scientific approach to setup time reduction that can be applied in any factory to any machine. Mastering the distinction between internal and external setup is thus the passport to achieving SMED. But even the tremendous reduction is insufficient to achieve the SMED objective. Operations that are now performed as internal setup can often be converted to external setup by re-examining their true function. The frequency and length of test runs and adjustment procedures depend on the skill of the setup engineer. The greatest difficulties in a setup operation lie in adjusting the equipment correctly.
