Engineering Change Management Process Research Articles

From Engineering Change to Enterprise Change Management: An empirical study on CM2 processes in the automotive industry

Companies need to respond to changing market requirements with product and process improvements. In order to better meet the needs of consumers, technical changes must be made within the product lifecycle of products. This can, for example, change the product's shape, ft or function. Engineering Change Management (ECM) processes are an elementary part of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and support handling these changes. ECM ensures that changes are assessed, communicated, coordinated, and implemented in time. The present research is based on a case study in an automotive company analysing the way of working within current ECM implementations against the CM2 framework proposed by Wu et al. [1]. Based on the comparison of qualitative interviews and company documents, the analysis shows deviations in the ECM process, especially regarding the implementation of changes in the plants. We suggest expanding the ECM process framework towards an Enterprise Change Management, including master data change in the IT systems and involving all relevant departments to implement the change successfully in the plant(s). Thus, we propose expanding the existing CM2 framework to inform ECM middle-range theory. In addition, recommendations for a successful ECM implementation are deduced from the comparison.

Towards a Universal Model of Engineering Change Management

AbstractThe paper deals with the issue of engineering change management (ECM). ECM has received much less attention in the literature than general change management. Moreover, due to their specifics (complexity and multifaceted nature), hitherto developed ECM models are difficult to implement in companies. The paper aims to develop a simplified, universal, and hence easily applicable model of ECM. We based our assumptions on a case study of a manufacturing company with low-volume production, representing a high-mix type, posing the following research question: how to improve the ECM process to make it simpler and more quickly adaptable in companies with the analyzed type of production when compared to the existing models? To answer this question, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted in late 2021/early 2022 using in-depth personal interviews. The research sample included 31 employees involved in ECM processes. Conventional qualitative content analysis was the primary technique for analyzing and interpreting the data. The study identified gaps and bottlenecks in the existing ECM model. On this basis, a proposal for a new ECM model was developed, distinguished by its simplicity and versatility (it can be implemented in companies operating in various industries). Particular emphasis was placed on ensuring the flow of information and circulation of technical documentation between the departments involved and clarifying the role of the change administrator. The paper sheds new light on how to implement engineering changes in organizations and has considerable application value.

Asset administration shell-based engineering change management process: Challenges and ways forward

Engineering change management (ECM) is a complex process that requires extensive documentation work and dedicated communication between the parties involved. In addition, the increasing complexity of products and the various fluctuations in market conditions lead to a significant increase in the quantity of engineering changes which are reflected throughout the stages of a product's life cycle. Recent studies show the lack of standards that enable the exchange of information resulting from the interaction of the actors involved in the change process. The advancing digitalization in industrial production has led to the establishment of the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) as a concrete implementation of the digital twin concept. In this regard, the recently published standards on AAS allow it to be considered as a candidate for improving the current ECM situation. Based on this consideration, in this paper we first present the challenges of the ECM process not only through an overview of the current literature and standards, but also based on observations from experts in industrial ECM processes. Afterwards, we present the potential of AAS for solution development with regard to the challenges identified for ECM. A concrete concept for streamlining the ECM process with the help of AAS concludes this contribution.

Part Change Management: A Case Study on Automotive Engineering and Production; Domestic and International Perspectives

AbstractDue to interest in aspects such as process, strategies, and tools of engineering changes expressed in a literature review, a case study was done on a major automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to assess the perceived quality of its part engineering change management process and supporting system through its employees’ eyes. A combination of 12 interviews lasting 12 h and 46 written surveys was used to capture the views of participants from all major functions found at the research and development (R&D) headquarters of the OEM: Purchasing, Production, Development, and one group consisting of all other functions (“Other”). Statistical analysis was performed to identify statistically significant differences between employee perceptions of an engineering change management system among different departments, amount of use, and years of use. It was found that statistically significant differences exist in terms of understanding the usability of the system between different departments and also between different years of experience.

An interpretable machine learning approach for engineering change management decision support in automotive industry

As an essential part of the Product Life Cycle (PLC), the time-to-market of products is influenced by Engineering Change Management (ECM) processes. An Engineering Change (EC) is part of a formal process in industry to describe, rationalize, determine, release components for final production or make changes to already released design. It includes information about shape, functionality, production location, cost, and other relevant data entries. The duration from creation to the approval of a change request can take weeks or even months, without apparent reasons for the bottleneck. In addition, changes to one component can lead to unexpected chain reactions to other components. Therefore, identifying impacts of changes is challenging for all Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). To address the above challenges, the authors have developed and built a machine learning-based decision support solution in this article. Community detection and stacking algorithms were applied to build more robust models. Impacts and lead time of Engineering Change Requests (ECRs) are predicted and explained by Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME). A case study was conducted on real-world data from an automotive company. After evaluation with industry experts, the solution approach was proved to have positive contributions to increasing the quality, efficiency, and transparency of the existing ECM processes.

Product design change propagation in automotive supply chain considering product life cycle

Changes in a product are necessary to guarantee high quality product and to remain competitive in the market. Engineering Change Management process ensures planning and implementation of changes effectively. Product design changes may be required in each step of product life cycle from its design to decline phase. Different tools are developed to study change propagation impact. Product architecture and change propagation path selection are the main focus areas found in methodologies developed for change management in recent years. Still, the manufacturing industry is facing challenges to control changes in implementation phase. A case study is conducted in an automotive company to understand perceived effect of product design change in manufacturing environment. Results of case study draws attention towards concerns reported, starting from raw material planning to disposition of changed part and the need for prediction of change in implementation phase across the functions, as well as in complete supply chain of automotive industry. Change propagation tools can be, if needed, extended from design phase to manufacturing environment.

Reducing the uncertainty in engineering change management using historical data and simulation modelling: a process twin concept

Engineering change management (ECM) makes up a large portion of overall product development effort and provokes significant uncertainty in planning and executing the product development operations. By enabling better planned ECMs, practitioners can improve overall project management. This work introduces the concept of the digital twin for the ECM process to enable its continuous quantitative assessment and improvement of engineering process planning. For this, we bring forward two key contributions: the concept of the framework for ECM process simulation and analysis, and the approach to refine the ECM modelling parameters using historical data and thus reduce associated uncertainty. This work proposes that by using past information, we can improve the accuracy of ECM modelling and enable more precise predictions on process lead time and its standard deviation. We conclude the article with an outlook for further research pointing at the current limitations and challenges.

Engineering Change Management Data Modeling for Engineering Change Management Processes in Engineering Industries

Engineering Industries (EI), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Engineering Change Management project with the objective of reengineering several business processes and enabling the processes within PLM ‎ applications and DMS ‎ applications. The Project covers Engineering Industries (EI) such as Energy Devices , Telecom devices, automotive global design centers and manufacturing facilities. The design approach will be covering the Engineering industry’s single PLM ‎ system platform for entire Organization for design change. Fundamental project management discipline and tools will be used to control, execute, and monitor the EI ‎ implementation. All Scope Change Requests will require cost justification and approval of the EI Steering Committee. A monthly Risk Management Report will summarize the risks, identify the mitigating measures necessary and identify respective responsibilities for implementing them.

Aplicabilidade do gerenciamento da mudança de engenharia na tropicalização de um equipamento industrial

O gerenciamento da mudança de engenharia (ECM) é uma prática comum em empresas globalizadas, mas que carece de relatos da sua disseminação em setores mais tradicionais. O presente artigo descreve o desafio encontrado na “tropicalização” de uma tela de centrífuga utilizada na fabricação do açúcar, e os aprendizados daí decorrentes para a mudança de um projeto norte-americano e sua adaptação à realidade brasileira. O método utilizado é o da pesquisa-ação e a abordagem qualitativa. O trabalho contribui ao demonstrar uma aplicação em que o ECM foi adaptado se alinhando ao modelo de negócio da empresa. Os formulários previstos no ECM não burocratizaram o processo, mas passaram servir para formalizar as vendas, engenharia e manufatura do produto. Os resultados conseguidos com o ECM na tropicalização do produto fez com que a técnica passasse a ser utilizada em todas as linhas de produto da empresa no Brasil. Dado que a importação de tecnologias é comum na indústria brasileira, sugere-se que sistemáticas similares aqui apresentada possam ser utilizadas para tropicalizar tecnologias que aumentem sua competitividade.

Using a Systemic Perspective to Support Engineering Change Management

Engineering change management (ECM) is an important enabler for the overall success of engineering projects. Engineering changes (ECs) occur because engineering projects are exposed to internal and external dynamic influences. The implementation of ECM supports project managers involved in coordinating EC processes, which results in more efficient operations. There are, however, many challenges related to ECM because of the need for internal and external stakeholders to collaborate during the EC process. Many existing approaches that support ECM adopt a reductionistic perspective. This paper takes a novel approach by adopting a systemic perspective. The self-organizing nature of complex systems is of particular interest because efficient ECM is a learning process that requires constant adaptation on different organizational levels. This paper describes how self-organization can be incorporated in ECM processes. A case study at a large construction project illustrates how ECM can facilitate self-organization. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.

An integrated engineering change management process model for a project-based manufacturing

In a project-based ETO (Engineering-To-Order) industry, design, purchasing, production and quality processes are closely integrated to meet a delivery schedule, cost limitation and quality specification. When an engineering change occurs in a project execution stage, miscommunication of design change may generate a significant cost and delay. This paper suggests a model to capture a design change and share activities for processing change done by each stakeholder. The framework also captures ECR (Engineering Change Request), ECO (Engineering Change Order) and a relationship among them with a result of processes. The data could be used for analysing defects of each process, improving a design quality, and a plan for cost reduction. For capturing, sharing and monitoring every change of drawing element and BOM (Bill of Materials), the model extracts a drawing and BOM from a product structure of a 3D CAD (Computer-Aided Design) system. Extracted data are sent to PLM (Product Life-Cycle Management)/ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system for planning, purchasing, manufacturing and quality control processes.

Modelling engineering change management in a new product development supply chain

The changes within a new product development (NPD) process are handled differently depending on the stage of the project. The changes during the initial stages of the project are addressed by design iterations, while the changes after the product design is complete are addressed using a formal engineering change management (ECM) process. The ECM process is a complex process, especially under a collaborative environment, where various independent entities work together for a common cause of product development. The interactions between the NPD and ECM processes have rarely been investigated in the research community. In this paper, we attempt to study the interactions between the various NPD and ECM process parameters by modelling the processes and simulated the model to understand the parameter interactions. The organisations in a supply chain have been characterised based on their interactions with the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) during the NPD process. The organisation process templates representing the NPD and ECM processes of each type of organisation in the supply chain have been modelled. The templates have been used to develop a simulation model representing the NPD and ECM processes for a supply chain. The process variables, such as processing rates, resources, resource composition, resource allocation priority, processing quality and phase overlap, have been included in the model. The results indicate that most of the variables and interactions among the variables have a significant influence on the NPD lead time. By identifying the status of the NPD process, the decision-makers can use these results to develop appropriate management policies to govern their product development projects.

Simulation of new product development and engineering changes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the interactions between new product development (NPD) and engineering change management (ECM) processes in terms of their impact on organizational performance.Design/methodology/approachA system dynamics model of the NPD and ECM processes within an organization has been built and simulated for a range of parameter values to investigate the interactions between the two processes.FindingsThe effect of various parameters on the lead‐time of the NPD process varies with different process environments. No single process management policy is advantageous for most if not all process operating conditions, thus it is important to change the critical parameters of the process every time.Research limitations/implicationsThe accuracy of the estimated effect of parameters on the lead‐time depends on the accuracy of estimated parameter values.Practical implicationsThe insights developed from the results would be useful for managers in planning their process management policies under various circumstances.Originality/valueThe study of interactions between the ECM and NPD processes has been scarce. This research would be very helpful to managers who plan the process managing strategies given various circumstances such as limited resources.

Modeling and managing engineering changes in a complex product development process

Today’s hypercompetitive worldwide market, demanding customers, and technological advances force corporations who develop new products to look into all the possible areas of improvement throughout the entire product life cycle management process. One of the research areas that have been overlooked in the past is engineering change management (ECM). This paper presents a simulation model for investigating the mutual impacts of ECM process and new product development (NPD) process on each other. The discrete event simulation model investigates how different NPD and ECM process characteristics are interrelated, and how these interactions eventually affect the lead time, cost, and quality of an NPD project. This model has the capacity to account for three different levels of uncertainties, namely activity uncertainty, design solution uncertainty, and environment uncertainty, and their effects on the probabilities of NPD rework. Decisions to be made by considering EC impacts are drawn from an enterprise level system perspective.

Re-engineering the Engineering Change Management process for a drawing-less environment

Currently, 3D models and 2D drawings are the main basic elements that together form and carry the product definition throughout the product lifecycle. With the advent of the Digital Product Definition trend, industries have been interested in adopting a Model-based Definition (MBD) approach that enables the integration of drawing annotations directly onto a 3D model, thereby minimizing the need to generate engineering drawings. This drawing-less environment requires a way to adequately carry the product definition throughout a product's lifecycle while supporting all of the downstream users’ specific needs. The objective of this article is to present a solution to carry the Engineering Change Management (ECM) process in a drawing-less environment. Therefore, based on ECM process requirements from two Canadian aerospace companies, we propose an MBD dataset which consists of an MBD model and a distribution file. The proposed MBD dataset is evaluated and the MBD-driven ECM process is outlined.

Decision-Making Assistance in Engineering-Change Management Process

Effective engineering-change management (ECM) is a real challenge in mechanical engineering industry and manufacturing companies. Computer-aided design systems are usually connected to other systems such as ERP or product data management, but currently this integration does not provide effective means to manage engineering change (EC). While communication between multidisciplinary teams working on a project is known to have a significantly positive impact on the ECM, the communication between disciplines is generally performed solely through message exchange. Experts could feel the need to meet to agree on the requested changes, which in turn translates into longer design and manufacturing processes. There is a need for a system that assists human experts in making decisions about ECs. Such a system will considerably reduce the processing time following a change-request procedure. This paper proposes a collaborative tool named EchoMag, which assists designers and experts during the change-management process. The proposed system ensures the coherence of data between the various disciplines involved in the change process. EchoMag also assists experts in making decisions by proposing alternative solutions when change requests are not agreed upon. Software agents were used to implement EchoMag for which a prototype was developed. Results of the implementation are discussed.

System dynamics modeling of engineering change management in a collaborative environment

Engineering changes to products aim to correct design faults, exploit new market opportunities, improve overall product performance, or reduce production costs. These changes are thus considered as opportunities to stay competitive in the market place and companies strive to implement them in their products at the lowest possible costs. Such engineering changes in a collaborative environment require the original equipment manufacturer to work together with suppliers for designing, manufacturing, and marketing a product profitably. Simulation of an engineering change management process provides an understanding of important factors affecting the engineering change management process and helps in identifying any critical components of the entire process. In this research, system dynamics models have been developed to study the complex interrelationships among various members in a collaborative supply chain to achieve effective and efficient engineering change management processes. To address the complexity of the models, several standard templates have been developed and used.

ENGINEERING CHANGE IMPACT ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES

This paper presents a method to manage Engineering Changes (EC) during the product development process, which is seen to be a complex system. The ability to manage engineering changes efficiently reflects the agility of an enterprise. Although there are unnecessary ECs that should be avoided, many of the ECs are actually beneficial. The proposed method explores the linkages between the product development process features and product specifications dependencies. It suggests ways of identifying and managing specification dependencies to support the Engineering Change Management process. Furthermore, the impacts of an EC on the product specifications as well as on the process organization are studied.

Leveraging Web Services for Implementing Vertical Industry Standards: A Model for Service-Based Interoperability

With deeper levels of external process integration and a growing number of electronic business relationships, enterprises are striving to become more interoperable with their business partners. While two-way integration linkages have mostly been realized as point-to-point connections with a handful of business partners, new integration technologies such as Web services and XML give enterprises the opportunity to pursue more cost-efficient and scalable ways of external business process integration. This research develops a model for service-based B2B interoperability that leverages Web service technologies for implementing industry standards. The authors instantiate the conceptual model in a B2B scenario in the automotive industry, where a consortium of automotive manufacturers and suppliers are currently redesigning their interorganizational engineering change management processes. From the evaluation, the authors suggest that the specification of standards related to pragmatics, semantics and syntax has to be complemented by additional design rules which define how industry standards are mapped to a public Web service design. The paper concludes with a revised model for service-based interoperability and discusses implications for B2B standardization.

Tracking product specification dependencies in collaborative design for conflict management

The main difficulty associated with a collaborative design process is understanding the product data exchanged during the design. Efficient and effective coordination of design activities relies on a thorough understanding of the dependencies between shared product specifications throughout the entire development cycle. This paper explores the linkages between the design process features and product specification dependencies, and suggests ways of identifying and managing specification dependencies to improve collaborative process performance. Using a UML (Unified Modeling Language) specification, we propose a process traceability tool to track the design process in an ongoing manner. Based on the information captured, the dependencies between specifications involved in the tracked process are identified and inserted in a dependency network, which is maintained throughout the design process. A set of mechanisms is then proposed to qualify the identified dependencies. Extracting and qualifying specification dependencies could be useful in many design situations; for example, during an engineering change management process to assess impacts and study change feasibility, or during a conflict management process to assist designers in resolving conflicts and maintaining the coherence of the design process (knowing that change management is a tool to conduct conflict management). Special attention is paid to the conflict management process. By means of a case study, we show how the solution we propose can assist designers during the conflict management process.