Research Article Interrelations among SMED Stages: A Causal Model José Roberto Díaz-Reza, 1 Jorge Luis García-Alcaraz, 2 José Roberto Mendoza-Fong, 1 Valeria Martínez-Loya, 2 Emilio Jiménez Macías, 3 and Julio Blanco-Fernández 4 1 Department of Electrical and Computer Sciences, Universidad Aut´ onoma de Ciudad Ju´ arez, Ave. del Charro 450 Norte. Col. Partido Romero, 32310 Ciudad Ju´ arez, CHIH, Mexico 2 Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Universidad Aut´ onoma de Ciudad Ju´ arez, Ave. del Charro 450 Norte. Col. Partido Romero, 32310 Ciudad Ju´ arez, CHIH, Mexico 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of La Rioja, Luis de Ulloa 20, Logro˜ no, 26004 La Rioja, Spain 4 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of La Rioja, Luis de Ulloa 20, Logro˜ no, 26004 La Rioja, Spain Correspondence should be addressed to Jos´ e Roberto D´ ıaz-Reza; al164440@alumnos.uacj.mx Received 2 March 2017; Revised 16 June 2017; Accepted 4 July 2017; Published 3 August 2017 Academic Editor: Carlos Gershenson Copyright © 2017 Jos´ e Roberto D´ ıaz-Reza et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Mexico has received a lot of foreign investment that has brought in a wide range of novel production philosophies, such as Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED). Despite its popularity and reported efectiveness, Mexican companies ofen quit SMED implementation as they consider it challenging. Tis usually happens when organizations are not familiarized enough with each one of the SMED stages or do not know how they are interrelated. In this article the interrelations among the diferent SMED implementation stages by means of a structural equations model are analyzed. Data for constructing the model were gathered from a survey administered to 250 employees from the Mexican maquiladora industry. Te survey assessed the importance of 14 activities belonging to the four SMED stages. Te descriptive analyses of these stages were conducted and integrated into a structural equations model as latent variables, to fnd their level of dependency. Te model was constructed using WarpPLS 5 sofware, and direct, indirect, and total efects among variables are analyzed and validated. Results from the model revealed that Stage 1 of SMED implementation, known as the Identifcation Stage, has both direct and indirect efects on all the other SMED stages, being the most important stage. 1. Introduction Many companies respond to the globalization phenomenon by establishing subsidiaries abroad, since this technique allows organizations to reach proximity to target markets. In the case of Mexico, subsidiaries are usually known as maquiladoras [1], and they belong to global manufacturing networks that work under the attractive benefts ofered by the hosts countries. Some of these benefts include available infrastructure, high training levels, and low production costs [1]. Te concept of maquiladoras, also known as “twin plants” or “shared production,” emerged as a new manufacturing operations model originally put forward in the Mexico- United States border during the 1960s [2], although it later became attractive to numerous European and Asian compa- nies [2]. Te maquiladora industry thus became a means to supply manufacturing goods to a larger market and a source of employment for the Mexican people [3], and because of its increasing popularity, the Mexican government established regulations that allowed both domestic and foreign-owned companies to temporally import materials and equipment and export fnished products under preferential tarif rates [3]. Many parent companies seek to establish maquiladoras in the Mexican territory to beneft mainly from low labor costs, less restrictive unions and regulations, and greater proximity to target markets [4]. Mexico is thus a facilitator to parent countries since Mexican maquiladoras ofer competitiveness and proximity to two major markets, the United States and Hindawi Complexity Volume 2017, Article ID 5912940, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/5912940