Engineering Product and Process Design Changes: A Literature Overview

Engineering product/process design changes are unavoidable and necessary for improvement & innovation. To capture the maximum market shares, manufacturers have to effectively and efficiently manage engineering changes throughout the entire product life. In this paper a comprehensive literature review on engineering change management in product/process perspective is presented. Engineering design changes can be taken in both aspects, such as an opportunity or as a burden. Different methods have been proposed by the researchers for better understanding of engineering change phenomenon. The insight regarding the changes propagation during the engineering design is crucial because a large number of artifacts are results of the predecessors. This article discusses the significant aspects of engineering changes, product architecture, propagation paths and highlighted the methods and tools that are proposed by the researchers. This paper will help researchers and managerial staff to get an idea and awareness about the change propagation and its impact. The review shows the prominence of engineering change management and concluded that the interest in the research field is escalating gradually.