Change Management

What is it?

Nothing stands still in this world. Change is the only constant. Once something is designed, chances are you will keep changing it. Even a new product will sometimes be created as a copy of an existing one with some changes applied. OpenBOM can help manufacturing companies manage engineering change orders (ECOs), connect them to CAD files, save revisions, create change requests and change orders, and organize data sharing in engineering teams.

Change management is the process of controlling changes to product information during the various stages of product development, manufacturing, and support.

Change management is also the process of controlling the lifecycle of processes. This includes the organization of change requests, the organization of change approval processes, traceability, and communication.

Why do you need it?

Change management is a fundamental part of engineering and manufacturing processes, and in a modern manufacturing environment, it’s becoming increasingly more important. Complexity is growing and multiple companies are involved in development activities. 

A convergence between the virtual and physical world is coming. Manufacturing companies are selling services and looking at how to organize maintenance processes as well as manage information related to physical products. Effective change management is the key to taking on the ever-evolving manufacturing world.

Change management gives you control over the trajectory of changes and provides you and your company with system-wide traceability of changes in product development, engineering, manufacturing, and support. If a company were to have no data regarding change management, product development would turn to chaos and there would be no way to monitor a company’s internal and external changes.

Why is OpenBOM different?

Tracking the lifecycle of products and managing changes is made simple with OpenBOM. You are easily able to view change history, revisions, change reports, change requests, and approvals. Whenever data is changed in catalogs, BOMs, orders, etc. the changes are captured and preserved in the OpenBOM database. 

OpenBOM has three levels of change management mechanism: 

  1. Change history 
  2. Item and BOM revisions 
  3. Change requests and orders 

Every change users make to item catalogs or BOMs are captured automatically and preserved in the databases. Revision commands allow you to save immutable snapshots of item data, including items, BOMs and also all item (file) attachments. Revision history is saved and you can easily generate reports that can be exported or used for change requests and change approvals.

OpenBOM uses a collaborative approval workflow mechanism. This allows you to set role-based approvals, meaning that you can instruct people on their roles and whether they should perform their work by observing change processes or taking part in them. 

Change order and change requests allow you to create a group of changes that go through the approval process and are individually connected to an item or BOM revision. The “Sign-Off” dashboard allows everyone involved in the approval process to see the current status and make their approvals in a single, collaborative dashboard that is always up to date.

How does it work?

The following mechanisms are available to support OpenBOM change management processes: 

  1. Change history 
  2. Saving revisions 
  3. Creating change requests and orders 

Change history is automatically available for OpenBOM catalogs and BOM. The “Save Revision” command is available for items and BOMs. When the “Change Management” mechanism is enabled, the “Change Request” command replaces the “Save Revision” command. In turn, the vision creation process is protected and the change approval can begin. 

Check OpenBOM Change Management Training Course to learn more.

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