The powerful knowledge contained in this book can make your workplace more productive, your job simpler, and everything more satisfying. It's about how to do equipment or product changeovers in record time--often in less than 10 minutes. The method you'll learn here is called SMED, short for "Single-Minute Exchange of Die" (the "single" here means a single-digit number of minutes).

Developed from a longer book, A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System (cat no. PP9903), written for managers, this book is written for frontline production and assembly associates. It presents an overview of the reasons why SMED is important for companies and employees, sets out the three basic stages of SMED, and then devotes a separate chapter to each of these stages. The first chapter of the book is like an "owner's manual" that tells you how to get the most out of your reading time by using the margin assists, summaries, and other features of the book to help pull out exactly what you need.

One of the most effective ways to use this book is to read and discuss it with other employees. The authors planned the book so that it can be used this way, organizing the book into chunks of information that can be covered in a series of short sessions. Each chapter includes reflection questions to stimulate group discussion. A Learning Package is also available (catalog no.PP7126), which includes a leader's guide, overhead transparencies to summarize major points, and color slides showing examples of SMED applications in different kinds of companies.