Redesign of the Engineering Change Process of a Supplier in the Automotive Industry

Engineering change (EC) processes often involve many functions and deal with dependencies inside and between products, organizations and production facilities. Therefore, it is complicated and sensitive to disturbances. Lean Product Development is a promising approach for reorganizing product development according to certain principles. The objective of this study was to find possibilities to improve the performance of EC processes, and the lead time of information transfer in particular. Another objective was to test if methods from Lean Product Development could be used to improve the EC process. A case study was performed at an automotive industry supplier to investigate their EC process. Methods used for data collection and analyses are process mapping, including estimation of lead-times within the process, interviews and questionnaires. Support for the redesigned process was implemented in the PLM system of the company. To redesign the EC process Lean Product Development principles were used. The study concludes that lead-times for information transfer of information in EC processes can be reduced to some extent by using this approach.