Managing engineering change requirements during the product development process (original) (raw)
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Engineering change analysis during ongoing product development
2007
Engineering changes are part of any design process. Changes are often requested even before a product design has been completed. However, change requests during an ongoing design process are difficult to assess because the design is still evolving. Some parts, where only conceptual designs exist, may be easy to change; other parts may already be frozen and hence more difficult and probably more expensive to change. In order to find the best way to implement a change at a given time, the designer needs to be aware of not only the design and the interactions, but also of the state of development of every part. However, many designers are not always aware of all interactions and, hence, unexpected and expensive change alternatives are chosen. This paper focuses on the question of how designers can be made aware of the impact of a proposed change before they commit. It discusses the links between the product, process and people domains that interact during product development, listing limiting factors that make change implementation risky and lead to increased change cost. The paper presents a tool to evaluate change proposals during ongoing design processes where the state of the development of parts is taken into account. The tool extends the Cambridge Change Prediction Method which assesses the risk of changes propagating between two parts. The paper concludes with the findings of two tool evaluation studies.
Research in Engineering Design, 2015
This paper reports a case study of design and engineering change management in the design and manufacture of automated train systems in a company. The paper uses a combination of surveys and interviews to map the information flow processes in the design and engineering processes. Based on the interviews and data collected on information flow and communication processes, the paper identifies the sources of engineering changes in the design process. Further, the paper takes cognizance of the change in the organizational structure of the company's engineering change processes to evaluate the engineering change notice (ECN) policies and its application in the company to identify the cause of errors in the engineering change process itself. Based on the analysis, the paper describes a support system that incorporates a novel, context-based ECN generation and workflow routing support system that is intended to reduce the cognitive load of the design engineer. The goal of the system is also to measure the causes of ECN to aid and improve managerial action. Keywords Information flow analysis Á Engineering change policies and management Á Organizational change Á Change support system
IFAC-PapersOnLine, 2017
During their life cycle, products can be redesigned due to the requested changes. One or more changes can be applied to the products in order to improve, upgrade and adapt it to new requirements. These changes can have serious impacts. For one design change, some impacts can be predictable while others occur due to unexpected propagations on other parts of the product. Dealing with this risk, companies look for an approach to evaluate and model the propagation of changes impacts to minimize their consequences. The main objective of this work is to characterise this change impact by identification of the dependencies among product components, which is a first and necessary step to evaluate change propagation. We develop a novel approach based on Design Structure Matrix and graphs to identify and characterise the type of dependency existent between product parameters and compute the change propagation impacts. Our findings show that functional dependency is more detailed than quantitative and qualitative dependency characterisation, already used in the literature. A case of 2D geometric model of bicycle is presented at the end of paper.
Assessing the challenges of managing product design change through-life
Journal of Engineering Design, 2015
Whole-life support for complex products requires coordinated action. Existing shortcomings of the design change management process currently operated within key UK engineering sectors are identified and discussed. The challenges that must be met in order to better satisfy the need for accurate product information across an integrated supply chain are presented. The role that information technology must play in achieving greater efficiency is developed. Recommendations are made in the form of 10 requirements to guide future design change management strategies. It is intended that implementation of these requirements will enable and improve the provision of product-related information so that it more accurately reflects the current configured status of the products. The aim is to facilitate and support enhanced product maintenance, effectiveness and utilisation.
Least Risky Change Propagation Path Analysis in Product Design Process
Systems Engineering, 2017
Requirement changes play a significant role in the product design and development process and constantly change due to the customers' expectations. This research seeks to develop an advanced approach for the product designing with an aim to predict the least risky change propagation path (CPP) in the product's structure. This is achieved by developing an algorithm and a mathematical model taking the overall propagated risk into consideration. The risks associated with requirement changes, which would result in rework, are quantified in terms of propagation probability and change impact. The proposed algorithm relates the change risk to the amount of rework needed to be done. The outcomes indicate the suitability of the proposed method in assessing different least risky CPPs to support the designer in reducing redesign time. Moreover, this technique also provides additional information, such as the number of distinct design components, and change steps involved in change propagation. A case study is presented to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed technique.
Managing Engineering Change within the Paradigm of Product Lifecycle Management
Processes
Managing change in organizations is a laborious task that consumes value added time in various segments of the product lifecycle including design and development, production, delivery, and product disposition. Product lifecycle management plays an important role in minimizing the time required for managing engineering changes. This research aims to perform an extensive survey of the literature in this area. There is no consolidated review available in this area summarizing advances in engineering change management vis-à-vis product lifecycle management. Thus, the paper gives an overview of product lifecycle management-based thinking and change management. This review puts forward the most relevant research regarding the practices and frameworks developed for managing engineering change in an organization. These include model-based definition, digital twin, process-based semantic approach, service-oriented architecture, Unified Modeling Language, and unified feature modeling. The gap...
Cost-effective propagation paths for multiple change requirements in the product design
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, 2017
Design projects have been surrounded by tight schedule and cost overruns. Therefore, it is indispensable to resolve the design changes in an economical way. This work introduces an advanced technique to assess and optimize change propagation paths for multiple change requirements occurring simultaneously during the product development process. A novel multiple change requirement algorithm and a mathematical model considering the overall propagated risk are developed, to explore cost-effective change propagation paths in terms of lead time. The risk is quantified with regard to propagation likelihood and change impact, which results in re-work. Design structure matrix framework is used to capture the dependencies between components. It is revealed that the change requirements execution sequence has a significant effect on the total number of change propagation paths, change steps, distinct change components, and completion time. This approach is illustrated by a case study, which ind...
Requirements-based development of an improved engineering change management method
Journal of Engineering Design, 2013
Engineering changes (ECs) are essential in complex product development, and their management is a crucial discipline for engineering industries. Numerous methods have been developed to support EC management (ECM), of which the change prediction method (CPM) is one of the most established. This article contributes a requirements-based benchmarking approach to assess and improve existing methods. The CPM is selected to be improved. First, based on a comprehensive literature survey and insights from industrial case studies, a set of 25 requirements for change management methods are developed. Second, these requirements are used as benchmarking criteria to assess the CPM in comparison to seven other promising methods. Third, the best-in-class solutions for each requirement are investigated to draw improvement suggestions for the CPM. Finally, an enhanced ECM method which implements these improvements is presented. 766 B. Hamraz et al. the implementation of necessary ECs to be completed in less time, incurring lower cost, and with better quality. Recent literature reviews (e.g. Jarratt et al. 2011; Hamraz, Caldwell, and Clarkson 2013) reveal numerous ECM methods, amongst which the change prediction method (CPM) from Clarkson, Simons, and Eckert is one of the most established and one of the very few methods which is available as a computer tool. In this paper, we aim at improving CPM through a benchmarking approach which follows four steps. First, we develop a list of requirements for ECM methods through investigation of current methods complemented by case study experience. Second, we use these requirements as benchmark criteria to assess CPM as well as seven other promising ECM methods. The best-in-class methods for each criterion are identified. Third, we study these benchmarks and draw improvement suggestions for CPM to close the competitive gaps to the other seven methods. Fourth, we describe how an improved ECM method known as the function-behaviourstructure (FBS) linkage method was developed to address these points. The data structure of the FBS linkage method is described in detail elsewhere (Hamraz, Caldwell, and Clarkson 2012); the present paper adds an insight by detailing the modelling process and by showing how the method provides an improvement to CPM with respect to the identified requirements.
Supporting change processes in design: Complexity, prediction and reliability
Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 2006
2006). Supporting change processes in design: Complexity, prediction and reliability. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 91(12), pp. 1521-1534. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] Version: [not recorded] Link(s) to article on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/