Implementing engineering change management through product life cycle management in automotive field

Abstract

Engineering changes in product are unavoidable and necessary to guarantee a high quality end-product. Focus should therefore to the reduction of costs per change rather than reduction in frequency of change. This will lead to lower overall product development costs and reduced time to market. Hence, the improvement of engineering change will most likely contribute to improve overall product life cycle management. Managing engineering changes across supply chain and disciplines within a single company is a non-trivial task. Thus, every time when change related information crosses company borders, translation and interpretation of data is needed. There is a need for individual ECM processes to communicate across the supply chain using a 'universal language' for ECM. This paper is providing focus to ensure quality of the modified data during change management and also to have good level of discipline across the supply chain.