**2. History of SMED**

It is a special technique of a Lean manufacturing system. It is also an integral part of Toyota production system. It is basically devised by the Shingo. Normally the setup time in the industries at very high and this creates a major obstacle in order to do the rapid change over. This can be easily and effectively compensated by SMED initially owner at Toyota able to reduce the setup time from 24 hours to few minutes. SMED is also considered as one of the tool to increase the flexibility. Shingo shows that this method can be applied to any type of industries. In order to provide the elements it details documentation procedure Shingo has written a classical book "A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System". It is one of the first and most valuable resources available on the SMED. In India

also, the application of SMED in all types of industries have been reported in academic literature [1]. Discussed the SMED methodology in garment manufacturing industry and reported considerable reduction in delay arising out of machine setting time, batch setting time and demonstration delay [2]. Presented the SMED application in automobile industry and reported that changeover time was reduced to 24.5% and considerable improvement in the productivity [3]. Showcased the experimental work carried out at automobile industry, located in Maharashtra, India. Implementation of SMED tool resulted in reduction of setup time by 82.44% and tool change time by 44.21%. This helped to produce additional 23 jobs/shift with same input [4]. Implemented the SMED tool and reported the significant savings with minimum investment and also highlighted the importance of safety and ergonomic factors during die exchange [5]. Presented a case study of the application of SMED in medicinal product based industry and reported remarkable achievement in the form of ability to reduce the batch size which can compensate the market demand fluctuations and also able to reduce the storage of medicinal products that are very closely related to expiration time (expired time).
