The automotive industry is one of the most demanding market sectors, in which flexibility and response capability constitute the basis for success. Lead-time reduction is one way of increasing productivity and improving companies’ competitiveness. This case study was developed at a company in the automotive sector specialized in car command cables manufacture, namely those which release doors, windows, seats, etc. Each car makes and model has different embedded cables, so that a great variety in production is required. Thus, each assembly line is used to manufacture various references to optimize resources, being the reduction of setup times is imperative. This study presents the approach developed on an assembly line, assigned as a pilot project in the implementation of the SMED methodology, complemented by other Lean tools, aiming to reduce the waste inherent to tool changes. The solutions developed enabled one to achieve a weekly reduction of approximately 58,3 % in the time due to setups, contributing by this way to an increase in assembly-line availability as well as to a productive capacity increase.
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