ABSTRACT
The Toyota production system comes into clearer focus once it is understood that this dialectic is applied throughout. The Toyota production system has been compared to squeezing water from a dry towel. The Toyota production system is therefore correctly understood as follows: Thorough waste elimination is the core around which the system is built which, in turn, is supported by the kanban system. Anyone undertaking the study of the Toyota production system comes face to face with the single-minute exchange of die (SMED) concept. It is essential for carrying out small lot production and for dealing with changes in demand. Some people argue that thorough preventive maintenance leads naturally to SMED. Others, partisans of skill engineering, reportedly argue that it took Toyota 30 years to cut a three-hour setup changeover to three minutes and that the roughly 340,000 times the operation was carried out during that period accounts for this reduction.
