Cutting Makeready Time
This item appeared in the Printing Industries Association of Southern California's weekly newsletter. It asks "Which of these statements best describes your operation with regard to makeready?
- Makeready times are not measured.
- Press makeready times are known and accounted for when estimating. Makeready times for other equipment are not routinely measured.
- Informal efforts to reduce makeready time have been attempted, primarily in the pressroom. Some awareness of reduction strategies exist.
- People have received training in makeready reduction. Some makeready reduction projects have been completed with significant time savings.
- A makeready reduction initiative has produced significant savings on all critical pieces of equipment.
- Makeready times are less than 20 minutes on all critical pieces of equipment. Makeready reduction strategies are clearly defined and understood by all.
If you answered 1, 2, or 3, you're missing an opportunity to be more profitable and free up additional capacity. Well-planned makeready reduction efforts frequently result in time savings of over 50 percent. These savings multiplied across hundreds of makereadies add up to impressive numbers. Makeready reduction strategies are linked to Lean manufacturing and its goal of reducing waste.
The best known strategy arose from work Shigeo Shingo did at Toyota in the 1960s, called Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED). The strategy depends on teamwork and, among other things, converting external tasks to internal tasks—that is, systematically performing as many makeready tasks as possible while the equipment is still running the previous job. Tasks are also streamlined and then standardized with the goal that different people will perform them in the same manner.