Product Development

The foresighted management of technical changes based on the EESI-Concept is fundamental for the management of specific electric-, electronic- and software requirements. The EESI-Concept comprises three integration steps, “Create transparency”, “Anticipation instead of documentation” and “Comprehensive realization”. The concept is based on a fundamental change in product and process documentation that is the complete documentation of all relevant information and interdependencies in form of an information net. The use of information nets for example even considers the interconnection between the electronic component, the software and the required installation and testing software. The foresighted change management then uses the complete documentation to simulate and analyze future product changes before their realization.

Unlike common opinion the efficiency of product development projects can be increased by the application of workflow-management-systems. The basis for this provides a reference model for workflow-supported product development which classifies the required workflow types and software tools for the different tasks in the project. For the frequent case of a change management process it will be shown how different variants of this process can be configured through workflow modules and which interdependencies between workflow and project management system occur.

The product change is a natural component of the development process and arises in the framework of a continuous improvement and refinement of planning inevitably. Ideally a constant information gain in the process of planning leads to a revision and an alteration of existing acceptance and concepts. A special case of the change is described by the Product Change Propagation. A local products change reproduces itself global and leads to a number of subsequent product changes, which can be measured heavily. In the complex planning surrounding the effect of a product change can be mostly not promptly recognised and will have complex correction loops as a consequence. This paper offers, aligned to the process organisation, a system-oriented approach for the early identification of planning inconsistencies by subsequent product changes.

IT systems which operate in a dynamic environment must adapt to permanently changing business requirements. In particular new compliance rules like Sarbanes-Oxley-Act or BASEL II demand complete transparency of business processes and IT-support, also after changes. IT-departments and software providers need to clearly define and continuously assure the quality of the IT system during development and operation.

The technical change management poses a particular challenge for the components supplier industry, due to this industry needs to consider a number of internal as well as OEMs’ external requirements concerning the underlying process. Thus a multitude of process sequences develop, which complicate standardisation and computer support. The following article describes a pragmatic method of resolution, which was conceptually designed and implemented within a project of the company KEIPER GmbH & Co. KG and the Chair of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering (ITM) at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Engineering change management is a complex process for companies involved in machinery, equipment and plant manufacture, and is critical to success. More is involved here than just following up changes to drawings or managing drawing versions. Individual manufacturers in the industry have to deal with a large number of different change issues on a daily basis, which, depending on the type of change, involve different areas and company staff members. A requirement for change generally involves a great many levels of management and administrative units within the company, from design through to purchase, logistics and cost management. To establish effective change management in the company, fully integrated and transparent process management is required, covering all areas and dealing with the total product life cycle.

Development projects are prone to continuous changes, whether because of additional insights or changes of requirmenents. To execute changes in a controlled and traceable manner, standardized methods and processes are used in product development, often as part of configuration management. The IT-support of configuration management with defined workflows and release mechanisms is provided by product data management systems (PDM). However, these often fail to acknowledge organizational and financial effects of a change on project management. To remedy this deficit, the article proposes an integrated project/macro-product model implemented by a semantic web and an ontology. This integrated model can be used to run metrics to analyse technical and commercial effects of a change thus improving the change management process as a whole.

For an efficient implementation of technical product changes, industrial companies need to use a goal-oriented procedure as well as an effective application of already existing knowledge about previous product changes. Mostly, product changes are implemented by using standardised workflows, which are controlled and documented by common workflow-management-systems. The administration effort of these systems often causes delayed implementation of product changes. In this context companies try to optimise the product change process by implementing new application systems and by integrating existing isolated applications in these systems. The organisation of subgroups, who finally implement the product change, is often neglected. Thereby, the development of new approaches in this area may close the gaps in order to make knowledge available.

Preserving and re-using experience and knowledge from employees is a decisive task in industrial engineering. In this context the usage of tools for knowledge management is highly up-to-date, however a concrete implementation starts very unassertively in practise. The article discusses advisability and feasibility of a process-based knowledge management. A method of resolution in form of a knowledge infrastructure is worked out exemplary for the two phases “product planning” and “product design” linking the tools of knowledge management with knowledge-related tasks of the product development process.

The management of production ramp-up of complex series products is one of the critical success factors for companies. Shorter ramp-up phases become more important for companies because an early time-to-market means extra gains right after market launch. Nevertheless, reduction of production ramp-up is mostly realised by time savings in the phase of product development. This is one of the reasons for a lot of product changes, which occur during production ramp-up and whereby original equipment manufacturers as well as suppliers are forced to renew already used series tools. To reduce unnecessary expense of tool replacement a forward displacement and a faster implementation of technical product changes are required. In this context the product change classification offers significant but until today unused potentials.