Managing engineering change requirements during the product development process

Abstract

Product redesign is not a straightforward task, specifically for complex commodities. Engineering change requirements can be evoked in any phase of the product development process, thus making engineering change management a challenging task. The motive of this study is to explore the best possible way of managing engineering change requirements taking execution sequence of change requirements into consideration. In this article, a new approach supporting engineering change requirements implementation sequence, by considering the risk associated with engineering changes, is presented. The risk of the redesign is hard to foresee since the engineering change effects are being dispersed from the instigating component to other associated components. In this article, the term of rework-risk is used for the amount of rework needed to be done to redesign the products’ components. The practicality of suggested method is analyzed using the redesign of an optical mouse as a case study. Managing engineering change requirements in a group with proper sequence can ensue with a 15% decrease in the redesign duration as compared with the prompt implementation of engineering change requirements. Conversely, it can also cause 36.23% increase in the redesign duration, if not handled in an appropriate sequence. The results from a single, simple case, indicates that running engineering change requirement batches can be beneficial.