How Engineering Change Management works ? ECM Process | Words of Engineer

Engineering Change Management (ECM)

Have you ever gone for football match with basketball?  This could happen, if proper change communication of sport event is not done to all the team members. Similarly, in Automotive or any industry, changes in products in terms of design, manufacturing process or any other reason are needed to cope with varying customer requirements. And those changes need to be properly reviewed and approved by authorized personnel to avoid unwanted changes in products. Finally, those changes should be communicated to organisation’s respective personnel for the effective implementation in products. So, to facilitate the smooth & correct flow of change communication most of the organisation prefers Engineering Change Management (ECM).

It doesn’t matter, how small or big the change is, all changes done on product throughout the product life need to be requested*, analysed, approved, implemented & recorded in proper format. Changes in product could be anything like change in material, change in design, change in manufacturing process. For the changes which could affect fit, form and function of the product, a formal change notification needs to send and get approved by customer.

*requested means change requested from either internal or external customer, sometime working on product/design improvement this can be considered.

Engineering Change Management (ECM) Process –

Almost all organisations has similar ECM process which consists of change request, analyse, approval and implementation with variation in change request and approval methods. Below is the simplified flow diagram of ECM process -

1. Engineering Change Request

If any requester identify the change,after his primary analysis identified change is converted to change request. This engineering change request then forwarded to authorized product owners,who are responsible for product changes.

Anyone from organisation can raise a change request for any part or product however authorized approval personnel remains same.


2. Engineering Change Order 

After engineering change request is approved by authorized personnel. It is forwarded to engineering department for change analysis, feasibility check.  To
study in detail, whether this change is possible or not.

If change is possible,then engineering team create, update drawings accordingly.

3. Change Implementation

Once drawing are updated, manufacturing engineer create or modify process documents accordingly. Also ensures change is being implemented in product from decided production dates .

4. Engineering Change Release Note

After all ECO changes are implemented,production cut-off numbers are communicated to all required stakeholders of the organisation by manufacturing engineer via engineering change release note.