Engineering Change Order - Product Design

Product Design

In product development the need for change is caused by:

• Correction of a design error that doesn’t become evident until testing and modeling, or customer use reveals it.
• A change in the customers’ requirements necessitating the redesign of part of the product
• A change in material or manufacturing method. This can be caused by a lack of material availability, a change in vendor, or to compensate for a design error.

An ECN must contain at least this information:

• Identification of what needs to be changed. This should include the part number and name of the component and reference to the drawings that show the component in detail or assembly.
• Reason(s) for the change.
• Description of the change. This includes a drawing of the component before and after the change. Generally, these drawings are only of the detail affected by the change.
• List of documents and departments affected by the change. The most important part of making a change is to see that all pertinent groups are notified and all documents updated.
• Approval of the change. As with the detail and assembly drawings, the changes must be approved by management.
• Instruction about when to introduce the change—immediately (scrapping current inventory), during the next production run, or at some other milestone.