In order to justify the need for quick die change, you need to look at the big picture, which consists of all set-up costs, salaried work force, direct labor, indirect labor, WIP inventory, material handling, tool maintenance, flow, and inspection (among others).

Once you have identified your costs, your finance department should be able to arrive at the savings for your company based on estimated reduced changeover time, employee pay, number of employees involved in changeover, and how many changeovers will be performed a day.

Here is an example of a company’s actual savings after implementing quick die change:

Before After

130 minute changeover 10 minute changeover

1.5 people 2.0 people

6 changeovers/day 18 changeovers/day

232 workdays/year 232 workdays/year

= $113,000/year =$35,000/year

$113,000 - $35,000 = $78,000 Net Savings Per Year

At Lightning Time Savers, we guarantee a 50% reduction in changeover time for our clients, but we usually achieve a 75-80% reduction (with many cases achieving even more of a reduction). We also experience a 3 month payback in savings to pay for the initial investment spent on Q.D.C. equipment.

You will notice that these savings are obtained even with more employees working on the project. This is because after implementing quick die change, employees are able to concentrate on doing their job safer and faster. Workers are no longer beholden to performing unnecessary steps during the changeover, which results in not only faster changeovers, but more changeovers, which leads to more versatility overall for the plant as a whole.

After doing some simple number crunching, it is easy to see why so many of our clients are leaders in the manufacturing world.