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The actual industrial development linked to the financial situation over the world lead automotive and other companies to expand their production level to stay competitive. Changing an organization to raise its production or profit is not a one day journey, but requires some steps.

Tools exist to develop the production level of manufacturing industry since more or less the fifties, and the continuous improvement is measured by some available and famous indicators around lean manufacturing mainly. Pressing equipment especially like a metal stamping press expressed through the following case study can be improved by respecting some fundamentals. Lean manufacturing aspects as 5 S’s and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) for example are tools that can be applied to improve the production rate of a stamping press. To even better improve the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of the same machine, a tool like SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) reveals to be really powerful when improving the global output rate of the machine.

The case study developed inside this present report aims to investigate all the possibilities to improve the OEE of pressing equipment facing theoretical aspects and reality issues. The tools involved are part of the content, but the way to support a company for the organizational change required to the success is another part of the content.

Technical solutions are taking part of the outcome, and a strong link to change management is included. Correlation between both technical and managerial aspects is the main line followed to get the final results. An experimental and actual OEE is calculated, and improved following a rating according to the possible improvements. Those results are analyzed to provide a weighted feedback related to the whole research.