Engineering change: Drivers, sources, and approaches in industry

Engineering change is a fundamental part of all design activities at all stages of design; complex products are designed by modification from existing ones; requirements change during long development projects; or problems through the design process or product use require rework. Yet engineering change has only recently become the topic of academic research and only few specific tools exist to manage engineering change. This paper reports on two workshops held in 2008, one in the UK and one in the US, where practising engineers reported on the challenges their organisations face with engineering changes and what approaches they take to deal with the effects of change. An analysis of 12 presentations shows that the causes for engineering change are very similar between different industries. However the approaches taken by companies to assess, manage and potentially take advantage of engineering changes are very different and in the absence of specific tools for managing engineering change companies used general process improvement and systems engineering tools, ranging from virtual design and QFD to high-level system simulation.