Many companies try to reduce setup time utilizing teams of employees. Much of our work involves training and working with these teams to make setup 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 setup time. Usually the setup time reduction effort simply fades away with little more than 50% reductions in setup on some machines. Most companies need rapid setups which equates to more than a 90% reduction in setup time on many machines. Because of this, we knew there was a need for a different approach to reducing setup time.

We have developed the FasTrack 8 step method. We analyze your current setup, 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 setup

  2. We document your current setup

  3. We analyze your current setup 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, setup 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 setup steps and document the new setup procedure.

  8. We train all applicable employees in the new setup 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 setups. First we examine your current setup documentation, historical data, interview your changeover experts. Then we video tape a normal setup completed by your best setup 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 setup. Utilizing the video tape we took, we now identify the elements of your current setup, and load it into our setup time reduction software.

  3. We analyze your current setup and document our recommended improvements. Every element of your current setup 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 setup elements and recommended improvements.

Phase 1 Deliverables:

  • Element listing of your current setup

  • 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 setup time and the cost to implement. Once you give the go ahead, we then conduct a review with the setup experts.

  2. We review our recommended improvements with your shop experts. (i.e. supervision, setup experts, operators, engineers and management.)  This review session is very detailed and is supported with our setup 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 setup time, based on the setup 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 setup steps and document the new setup procedure. Once all improvements are implemented, we work on the sequence of the remaining changeover steps and develop a setup 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 setup procedure. Every employee who would do a setup 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 setup on their own.

Phase 3 Objective: Provide a turnkey implementation.

Phase 3 Deliverables:

  • Complete implementation on machine setup improvement.

  • Setup procedure manual.

  • Training of employees doing setups.

  • Setup 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 setup 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 setups and Reliable startups.

Setup Time Reduction Software