Time Reduction of Production Model Changeover in PVC Plastic Compound Manufacturing Process

This paper presents a method for reducing loss time in the PVC plastic compound manufacturing process. This is mainly due to the model changeover of the product accounting for 10.7%. The questioning principle 6W1H is used in this research to analyze each activity in the model changeover in order to find the improvement method. The Single Minutes Exchange of Dies (SMED) technique is selected for improvement by separating the internal activities and outside activities then make the internal activities into external activities. And the last step is to optimize the efficiency for both activities. The results after improvement show that the model changeover time can be reduced from 255 to 82.5 minutes per time (67.6% reduction), the production increases to 8,632 kg per month, the production cost reduction is 103,584 baht per month, the efficiency of the PVC plastic compound manufacturing process increases from 79% to 84%, and the payback period is only 1.44 days.