How to Boost Your Supply Chain Through Efficient Change Management: Roima Aton 7.1 and Impact Analysis Tool

The change management process in this example starts from a quite freely defined Feedback, which could be either a development idea, or an improvement proposal provided, for instance, by a customer, production or service personnel, or a subcontractor. This feedback is received and documented through Roima Aton’s feedback form.

Feedback is analyzed and reviewed, typically by a product expert. If the suggested changes seem like a good idea, an Engineering Change Request (ECR) is created in the system based on the feedback.

In step 2, the ECR is analyzed in more detail to determine the potential costs and impacts of its implementation. Defining and analyzing all the impacts typically requires cooperation across the entire supply chain, including different areas of product engineering (mechanical, electrical and software, depending on the nature of the product), purchasing, warehouse, production, subcontractors, and even sales or marketing.

If after this impact analysis phase all parties still agree that the change is indeed relevant, an Engineering Change Order (ECO) is created.

The creation of the ECO initiates and schedules the actual change implementation process. This involves at least the engineering function but may also require some preparations and planning across the entire supply chain.

Typically, to create a new product or module version, several changes are collected and done as a package instead of just making a single change.

Once the engineering work is completed, all the parties are informed of the changes through an Engineering Change Notification (ECN).

ECN is a detailed report about all the changes done in this specific product or module version.

As a starting point for this example, let’s assume that we have already accepted and frozen a product configuration with Item A, version 0 (A.0).

As seen in the picture above, Item A has just two parts in its structure, namely Item B, version 0 (B.0) and Item C (C). Item A also has one related document: D1, revision 0 (D1.0).

The change process begins when we receive a feedback notice describing that there is something to fix in the original configuration relating to product A and its part B. In many cases, the feedback at this stage might not be very detailed yet.

At first, a feedback entry concerning this proposal is documented by, e.g., any user, after which the feedback is analyzed by a product expert. If the feedback is agreed to have potential for further consideration, the product expert will create an Engineering Change Request (ECR) for it.

In the Engineering Change Request (ECR) phase, the impacts of the change are analyzed. The main question is this: If we would set out to fix the problem defined in the feedback, what should actually be changed and what would the potential impacts be?

For instance, if we change Item A and its bill of materials (BOM) and the related document, are those possibly used by some other products or configurations and should those, too, be changed as a consequence? And if we changed those, what would the impacts of those changes be? And so on.

All this is analyzed, and the needed changes are listed using the Impact Analysis tool. In many cases, even a minor change might have major impacts on other items and documents. In this example, the result and needed changes are simple: only three changes are needed.

The results of the impact analysis are documented in the Impact Analysis table / change list. It is a detailed description of what needs to be changed.

In this example, the IA Change List would look like this:

1. Create a new version of Item A (A.0 → A.1).
2. Create a new version of Item B (B.0 → B.1).
   In the BOM structure of Item A’s new version 1 (A.1), replace Item B’s version 0 (B.0) with new version 1 (B.1).
3. Create new document revision (D1.0 → D1.1) and connect it to the Item A’s new version 1 (A.1).

The IA change list can be used as a task list for the engineering personnel, defining the changes that should be done. Alternatively, the steps could be executed using the Impact Analysis function’s mass implementation tool.

In this phase of the process, the other parties of the supply chain can also start their preparation and planning work using the IA change list, as detailed change information is now documented and available in the system.

Next, in the Engineering Change (ECO) phase, it is time to implement the changes. In the mass implementation tool, the user first selects the desired changes from the list and defines their correct implementation order: for example, new item versions should be created first before they can be used to replace old item versions in the structures.

After this, the system analyzes the selected changes and presents the user with a report of the results. This report determines, for example, whether the changes are possible to implement or if some information is missing or if any other conflicts arise.

After the user has reviewed and acknowledged that everything seems to be ok, the changes are implemented in the database. In practice, this means the creation of new item versions and new document revisions, as well as structural changes like the replacement of items in BOM.

After this operation, the status of each change row in the IA change list is updated accordingly.

After the new versions and revisions of items, structures and documents have been created, the engineers can start the actual engineering work to finalize the configuration by, for instance, updating and modifying CAD assemblies and drawings.

At this stage, engineers no longer need to do any versioning of items or documents.

Once the changes have been implemented and are completed, the detailed IA change list is used to communicate the changes made to this specific version through an Engineering Change Notification (ECN) to all relevant parties of the supply chain.

The IA change list also serves as the documentation of the made changes and is available for future development of the product.