A Brief History of Set-Up Reduction

A research essay by Art Smalley examining competing origins of set-up reduction in manufacturing and arguing there is no single inventor. It works through candidate cases in historical order, from Sakichi Toyoda’s G-Type loom and Ohno-era machine shops to Danly quick die change presses, Toyota press shop kaizen, a Toyota do Brasil forging shop, Shigeo Shingo’s SMED, and parallel work at Nissan, drawing on interviews with five retired Toyota managers.