The Application of Single Minute Exchange of Die in the Production Process Improvement

This paper concerns Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) which is one of lean tools applied for reduction of change over time on machines. It is a review paper on the basis of the literature collected from three electronic databases: Elsevier Science, Springer and E-resources from the library of Poznan University of Technology. The retrieved articles were screened following the inclusion/exclusion criteria. After applying the literature selection criteria 40 articles published between the years 2000-2017 were chosen. These papers were classified on the basis of the year of publication, the journal title, the main issue, tools and methods, type and also location. Their analysis revealed that SMED was applied in various range of enterprises in order to reduce time of setups and eliminate unnecessary activities which have no value for the process. It was also a useful tool for production process improvement as it may support lean tools in order to increase the process efficiency. The vast majority of papers was published in European countries. However, the increasing number of publications in recent years may suggest the increase of interest in this subject in different areas.