Addressing environmental and economic impacts of changeover operations through manufacturing strategies

A Changeover is the set of operations required to switch from producing one product to another and quite frequently it includes both setup and cleaning operations. Changeovers are especially critical for multi-product environments where flexibility, time and quality are key requirements of the manufacturing system. A range of environmental and economic impacts occur during changeover operations and often the magnitude and extent of these are not fully captured by manufacturing companies. This paper investigates the implication of manufacturing strategies that are related to changeover operations such as LEAN, TQM, JIT and TPM on changeover operations and the direction they may drive changeover operations in the future. Current results from recent case studies suggest that a part of the environmental and economic impacts from changeovers is within the scope of these manufacturing philosophies and could have been mitigated through comprehensive and successful implementation. However, this has been countered by the lack of information that connects the changeover impacts to the manufacturing strategies. This paper aims to address this gap.