product change management

Even during ramp-up phases technical product changes are inevitable. Swift and spontaneous reaction is therefore required for meeting the set market entry date. At the same time, risk estimation of different solution alternatives is needed to evaluate the effects of product changes on product and processes. In this context unstructured procedures observed in practice lead to unsatisfactory solutions and unforeseeable effects. This dilemma of product change management has been countered with the development of PMEA (Product Change Mode and Effect Analysis) and its combination with TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving).

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.

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.

In the conflict between greater customer requirements and a diversification in production industry, companies are forced to reduce ramp-up times significantly. The trend towards a continuous reduction of the time-to-market puts pressure on these companies and addresses the realisation of the expected market entry. More often this results in an inefficient production run-up, because the reduction in development time poses an important factor for later product changes. With regard to shorter product life cycles, it is expected that time for production and distribution will be extended. Cost-intensive product changes will reduce profit, which is why product change management becomes more and more important. Nevertheless, the effective management of process changes is not addressed sufficiently by today’s research. These in particular can be defined as most critical factors for an efficient production run-up.

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.

The handling of complex technical changes still is a highly critical process within the industrial practice. Hence, it very often comes to critical scenarios concerning key operating figures like time, product quality or expenses, which troubles the coordinated start of operations or the running of serial production. The aim of the article is to introduce a bundle of methods, which helps to integrate the process- and product views of the different engineering partners, in order to increase transparency and efficiency for the collaborative processing of product changes within engineering networks.