Many companies try to reduce changeover time utilizing teams of employees. Much of our work involves training and working with these teams to make changeover time reduction a reality. The problem is teams typically take a long time to get substantial improvements and they don't sustain the effort long enough to achieve 90% reductions in changeover time. Usually the changeover time reduction effort simply fades away with little more than 50% reductions in changeover on some machines. Most companies need rapid changeovers which equates to more than a 90% reduction in changeover time on many machines. Because of this, we knew there was a need for a different approach to reducing changeover time.

We have developed the FasTrack 8 step method. We analyze your current changeover, provide the recommended improvements, get buy in from employees and fully implement the improvement. You, the customer, are in control every step of the way. You are provided complete documentation of recommendations and results to expect and must approve before implementation. If you choose, Claunch & Associates, Inc. can make the recommendations and you can have your employees implement.

The steps of FasTrack are:

  1. We conduct an assessment to determine the minimum amount of improvement that is possible in your changeover

  2. We document your current changeover

  3. We analyze your current changeover and develop our recommended improvements.

  4. We review our recommended improvements, including costs to implement, with management.

  5. We review our recommended improvements with your shop experts. (i.e. supervision, changeover experts, operators, and engineers.)

  6. Once you give the go ahead, we implement the improvements and verify the results.

  7. We determine the most productive sequence of changeover steps and document the new changeover procedure.

  8. We train all applicable employees in the new changeover procedure.

Typically these 8 steps break down into three phases.

PHASE 1:

  1. We come to your facility to conduct an assessment to determine the minimum amount of improvement that is possible in your changeovers. First we examine your current changeover documentation, historical data, interview your changeover experts. Then we video tape a normal changeover completed by your best changeover expert including start up. Finally, we meet with management to present our initial determination of the amount of improvement we believe is possible.

  2. We document your current changeover. Utilizing the video tape we took, we now identify the elements of your current changeover, and load it into our changeover time reduction software.

  3. We analyze your current changeover and document our recommended improvements. Every element of your current changeover and startup is examined to determine what low cost improvements can be made, including a bill of materials to be purchased and the specific amount of time that can be reduced.

Phase 1 Objective:  Identify current changeover elements and recommended improvements.

Phase 1 Deliverables:

  • Element listing of your current changeover

  • Implementation planner listing each specific recommendation with estimated cost and bill of materials required.

PHASE 2:

  1. We review our recommended improvements, including costs to implement, with management.  Typically the review with management is involved more with the resulting reduction in changeover time and the cost to implement. Once you give the go ahead, we then conduct a review with the changeover experts.

  2. We review our recommended improvements with your shop experts. (i.e. supervision, changeover experts, operators, engineers and management.)  This review session is very detailed and is supported with our changeover documentation, implementation planner, video tape, pictures of improvement and catalogs of purchased items.

Phase 2 Objective: Review sessions wherein each recommendation is presented for buy in and improvement as necessary.

Phase 2 Deliverables:

  • Meeting with management and supervision.

  • Meeting with operators and mechanics.

  • Final implementation planner including all improvements, costs and time reduced.

Our guarantee:  "If Claunch & Associates, Inc. can not identify improvements that result in at least a 50% reduction in changeover time, based on the changeover they document at your facility, you pay nothing for their services, no matter how much time or costs they have incurred on your behalf."

PHASE 3:

  1. Once you give the go ahead, we implement the improvements and verify the results.  We order all necessary materials, fabricate and implement all the improvements approved in step 5.

  2. We determine the most productive sequence of changeover steps and document the new changeover procedure.  Once all improvements are implemented, we work on the sequence of the remaining changeover steps and develop a changeover manual for your plant. We determine what the most efficient sequence is and layout the manual in that order, including pictures and descriptions of each step, and a checklist of the changeover steps.

  3. We train all applicable employees in the new changeover procedure.  Every employee who would do a changeover is trained by Claunch & Associates in the improved method. Both the trainer and the employee must sign off that they are capable of doing a changeover on their own.

Phase 3 Objective: Provide a turnkey implementation.

Phase 3 Deliverables:

  • Complete implementation on machine changeover improvement.

  • Changeover procedure manual.

  • Training of employees doing changeovers.

  • Changeover checklist

SPECIAL BONUS: Baseline Settings Manual

We at Claunch & Associates, Inc. have found that often after we leave, adjustments are sometimes made by employees that reverse the improvements. Because of this, we will include a baseline settings manual for each machine we implement the changeover time reduction. This manual will provide all the settings that we determine are critical to a reliable startup. In the event of a poor start up, your employees can go back to this manual and determine what settings have been changed and reset those to the proper setting. Ensuring that all employees that may adjust settings utilizing the information in this manual will ensure you always have Rapid changeovers and Reliable startups.

 

Changeover Time Reduction Software