For manufacturers to succeed in today’s world of shortening product lifecycles, rising quality and reliability standards, and heightened attention to product safety, solid product data management, version control, and engineering change management are essential.
Products can now be defined, released, and revised in a governed, workflow-supported manner thanks to the addition of structure and discipline to the product data management process through engineering change management. Engineering changes can be tracked, evaluated, and implemented throughout a product’s entire lifecycle with the help of product versioning and engineering change management.
Engineering change management is a useful tool that assists organizations in planning and managing their product versioning, product lifecycles, and engineering changes. It comes with several important features to help businesses optimize their processes.
Engineering Change Management in Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM includes a module called Engineering Change Management responsible for managing product releases and versions. Having this module available within Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes managing product versions simple and standardized. Upgrades and changes to product data are much easier to manage thanks to version and release control with centralized data ownership.
Key Features of ECM
ECM enables organizations to:
– Create an engineering group dedicated to overseeing the dissemination of up-to-date product information across the company, ensuring that all team members have access to the latest updates.
– Implement a system to track and manage product versions at various stages of the supply chain, allowing for efficient monitoring and control of changes to products.
– Establish a robust process for managing engineering changes, allowing any team member to request modifications to products. Utilize change orders to evaluate and document the impact of proposed changes, and implement workflows to streamline the engineering change process and product updates.
– Enforce readiness control measures to ensure that all required product data is complete before releasing products, conducting system checks and providing user guidance through questionnaires and checklists.
– Enhance product release capabilities by allowing one engineering organization (legal entity) to release fully configured product versions to other legal entities, facilitating seamless collaboration and coordination across different teams.
Why to adopt Engineering Change Management tool?
ECM provides a plethora of benefits, including but not limited to the following:
Document control
Because your products are under strict engineering control, you always have access to the most up-to-date versions of all product-related documents. Product documentation can be anything from schematics to user guides to photographs. ECM’s ‘document control’ improves coordination by letting all teams keep tabs on the product’s evolution in real-time.
Release management
With ECM, you can easily control the sharing of product information with other companies. Fields are automatically prefilled based on product type, and you can set up single or multiple releases. Release details allow you to choose the live product version and customize your product architecture.
Attributes search capabilities
You can easily track multiple product attributes to quickly identify existing products that meet your requirements. Integrating with PLM only requires a few simple settings changes to add these attributes. With these attributes, you can retrieve essential data about each product in your production system, such as weight, height, dimensions, and more.
Product Readiness Management
ECM augments the entire product data structure with applicable product readiness policies. Data fields can be checked for completion, prices can be validated, and sizing requirements can be double-checked with the help of the readiness policy. The readiness control policy also allows you to delegate tasks to individuals or groups to fill specific fields.
When introducing a new or updated product to the company, ECM checklists ensure that all necessary information is accurately entered. In case of multiple businesses under your umbrella, each business can have its unique checklist, tailored to its specific requirements.
Product status information
You can learn about the current state of the product, on which you can base important business decisions. Product status per business can be managed to permit or disallow sales order creation, purchase order creation, inventory management, transportation, and more. Gaining visibility into product status and revision numbers across the supply chain enables better management.
Centralized data management
It has a streamlined product release process, centralized data with role-specific access, and version control features. This ensures that all employees can access the most recent and relevant data regardless of department, division, or location.
Conclusion
Engineering Change Management is useful for managing product data, versioning, lifecycle management, engineering change requests, readiness control, and product release functions. By integrating other powerful tools like SAP and Salesforce, organizations can manage their engineering processes well and ensure users across the enterprise have access to accurate and useful product data. Such systems enable businesses to improve their workflows, reduce mistakes, and get more done overall.
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