In the late 1940s, Toyota spent over four hours swapping dies on its massive stamping presses.
Former Toyota trainer Isao Kato noted that internal changes cut the average to 15 minutes by 1962. By 1971, the shop hit three minutes.
Toyota achieved this by prepping tools while machines were still running and standardizing clamp positions.
Long changeovers force massive batch production. Three-minute swaps let plants build exact customer orders daily without drowning in inventory.
Lesson learned? Use a stopwatch to time your changeover, then prep every possible step before shutting down the machine
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Matthew Doehring
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Originally published on St. Clair Exchange: https://stclairexchange.substack.com/p/toyota-cut-its-slowest-press-changeovers
