Lead Time Reduction for managing Engineering Changes

Abstract

Engineering changes need to be done in a product because of design improvement, product and process optimization, government regulations, etc. Implementation of those changes in the production shop floor involves multiple stakeholders and functions within and outside the company. Engineering change management (ECM) is the process of communication between all stakeholders to implement and document the engineering change on the shop floor. This involvement of multiple stakeholders and responsibilities increases ECM lead time and creates a challenge for change implementation on the shop floor. This paper presents such a case of engineering changes for factory shop floor implementation. Causes like delay in decisions behind an increase in lead time have been investigated. Process automation solutions that can reduce the ECM lead time drastically have been proposed and implemented. The developed solution for tool selection and layout problems achieves almost a 66% reduction in lead time and helps the factory for process standardization and resource optimization.