PLM Library · Paper
Engineering change: An overview and perspective on the literature
- Author
- Timothy A. W. Jarratt, Claudia M. Eckert, Nicholas H. M. Caldwell, P. John Clarkson
- Publisher
- Research in Engineering Design, Vol. 22, pp. 103–124
- Year
- 2011
Summary
A comprehensive review of the engineering change literature, covering the change process, change propagation, change prediction and the factors that make changes to released product information difficult and expensive.
The paper structures the field — triggers, processes, tools and research methods — and identifies open issues, making it the standard entry point into engineering change management research.
Our verdict
Recommended reading for anyone working on change processes. The best single overview of engineering change management: it explains why changes propagate and what makes them costly — the problem that PLM change workflows exist to control.
Who should read it
- —Configuration and change managers designing or improving change processes
- —PLM consultants and architects implementing change management workflows
- —Researchers and students in engineering design and product development
How it relates to your work
- —Provides the process and propagation concepts behind ECR/ECO workflows in PLM systems.
- —Useful for benchmarking a company's change process against the structured literature.
- —Change propagation analysis connects to impact analysis and where-used capabilities in PLM.
Keep in mind
- —A literature review: conceptual rather than a step-by-step implementation guide.
- —Behind the publisher's paywall; a preprint may be available through university repositories.