Engineering Change Management


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Everyone knows the problems


Everyone knows it's tough to:
  • respond to customer needs faster than competitors
  • improve time to market
  • be sure you are working with the latest information
  • manage complex and compound documents and drawings
  • be sure the team's information is up to date and easy to find
  • keep up to date with changing specifications and requirements
  • share accurate, up to date information with a geographically dispersed team
  • manage all information including off-line and paper documents
  • do change impact analysis as far down as tooling and manufacturing process costs
  • inform off-site team members instantly of changes
  • communicate effectively and accurately with downstream users
  • communicate last minute changes to team members
  • link changes to databases for instant updating
  • preview the impact of engineering changes
  • drive down review and approval cycle times
  • monitor change approval and implementation progress
  • know the status of all change orders
  • reduce change cycle time
  • track a large volume of changes
  • manage and control product revisions
  • manage 'as designed' versus 'as changed'
  • find out about the history of past changes
  • find out about planned engineering changes
'If we didn't have a good ECM process R&D people and other inappropriate people would make changes to products in production without telling anyone.'

'We missed a market window because a communication error in the Engineering Change process delayed the product.'

'In our organization ECO's are usually handwritten and distributed by hand. Often you can't read them. Sometimes they get lost.'

'Changes cause us time, cost and quality problems. They get in the way of new development. They are a nuisance and an interference. They delay innovation for new developments'

'Our ECN process is bureaucratic. There are long loops in the process and every time they cross an organizational interface they create problems with dates, costs and quality.'

'The whole EC process is time-consuming, error-prone and uninteresting. I have to access several different information sources, including paper, to gather the necessary information for the analysis.'

'Changing a Bill Of Materials is the worst, because it's so difficult to represent the changes in an accurate, consistent way.'

'As our change process is so inefficient and time-consuming some people try to avoid it. They make minor modifications to products and drawings without telling anyone.'

'Many errors and problems are introduced in our change process because much of the information has to be entered manually from the paper ECO into downstream systems. All sorts of errors get in the ERP database, leading to production delays, wrong products, scrap and lots of inventory.'

'A small change to a spec. was overlooked and didn't make it into a new revision of a drawing. The error was found after the first hundred had been delivered.'

'Bad management of the engineering change process leads to customer dissatisfaction, production inefficiency and higher production costs.'

'We haven't found an easy way to properly control engineering changes to our products. It's such a complex process. Unless we're very careful we get internal confusion, product recalls and even worse, product liability actions.'

'Our engineering change control system is bureaucratic, paper-intensive, complex and slow'.

'Central Engineering Services has the responsibility, but not the tools, to push the changes through as quickly as possible. Up to 16 departments are involved in a change. It takes many months and more than fifty different documents to get a proposed change approved and incorporated into the product design. Even when a change has been agreed and announced, it takes months for the corresponding documentation to get to the field.'





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Page last modified on February 18, 2000
Copyright 1999, 2000 by John Stark