Process design for the management of changes in manufacturing: Toward a Manufacturing Change Management process

The efficient and effective management of changes in manufacturing constitutes a key success factor for industrial enterprises in a highly dynamic world. Despite its undoubted importance, the management of manufacturing changes as a dedicated field of research has rarely been a focus of engineering science. However, other fields of research, such as Engineering Change Management (ECM) or continuous factory planning, investigate similar topics (ECM) in a different domain (Product Development) or possess the same object of observation (manufacturing/factories) focusing on different approaches (factory planning). Based on the broad basis of literature available in these fields, a dedicated process for the management of changes in manufacturing - an MCM process - is designed. Guided by the Design Research Methodology (DRM), a total of 42 processes and related process requirements have been comparatively analyzed for the MCM process design. In addition to further detailed analyses of process stages, the article elaborates on the validation approach and results as well as the derived need for further research in the field of Manufacturing Change Management (MCM).