Meetings and SMED

SMED, or Single Minute Exchange of Dies, is a lean manufacturing methodology for driving down set-up times.

The first step in SMED is to classify all set-up actions as either 'internal' (requiring the machine to be off) or 'external' (which can be done while the machine is still processing the last batch).

The next step is to change internal set-up steps to external set-up steps.  The more stuff you can do while the previous batch is running, the less time the machine has to be down for set-up.

So what's that got to do with meetings?  Well, think of the meeting room as the machine.  The meeting scheduled before yours is the current batch.  Your meeting is the next batch.

The stuff you do to prepare for the meeting (opening the meeting notice in Outlook, calling the dial-in number, hooking up video, power, and ethernet to your laptop, starting live meeting, etc. ) is set-up for your batch (your meeting).

Normally, people running meetings do all these steps after the previous batch (meeting) is done and everyone's left.  By the time you're ready to show your slides, 10 minutes of your meeting time is wasted!  This is particularly annoying if the previous meeting runs late.

Well, a lot of these set-up steps can be done before you even show up to the meeting room.  By converting internal set-up (set-up while you're in the meeting room) to external set-up (before you go to the meeting room) you can start the meeting much earlier.

Last time I ran our weekly SCCB meeting, I tried this.  Not only did I start within a minute or two of the scheduled start time, but the entire meeting was over in just 20 minutes - a record.