CENIT Engineering Change Management
Managing holistic engineering change processes across disciplines and business units
Adaptations to market requirements and increasing competition require companies to shorten their innovation cycles and offer a wide variety of products. This leads to a complexity of models and variants of products, which always require new adaptations and improvements. When it comes to a planned improvement, it is crucial to consider all aspects of an engineering change management process along the entire value chain. In this way, all relevant stakeholders can be involved at an early stage to clarify feasibility, costs and compliance with sustainability criteria which becomes more and more important.
Managing the complexity of an engineering change
The change of a product or component is a complex and collaborative process that requires the participation of all business units that play a value-adding role - from sales to service. A well-modeled and applied engineering change process is characterized by an early coordination among all relevant stakeholders as well as early recognition of potential consequences, whether technical or economic. Implementation according to schedule and targeted introduction of the changes at a specific point in time, ideally in line with the so-called 6R rule, are equally important.
Implementing an engineering change via a holistic approach means taking all aspects into consideration - not just functional or design-related challenges. For example, an uncoordinated timing for the introduction of a change can significantly increase the costs for parallel inventory management and scrapping, or disposal of redundant inventory.
On the other hand, limited change consistency can easily turn an in-house production into a third-party production. Not according sufficient attention to such aspects during assessment and implementation may result in defective parts during assembly.
If the change aims to achieve a technical and economic improvement, one should precisely define beforehand how both goals will be achieved at the same time.
This is why good engineering change management is not only an important component of efficient and lean production: it promotes the operational workflows rather than disrupting them.
Agile engineering change management with cenitCONNECT APM
Our product cenitCONNECT Advanced Process Management (APM) supports your employees optimally in the implementation of interdisciplinary engineering change processes. APM is an intuitive application that relies on new web-based technologies by SAP. It offers intelligent functions that can be applied flexibly to achieve 6R compliance within the context of a change.
Depending on the specifics of the engineering change, this may produce a quick cycle with short assessment and decision-making phases. Complex engineering changes, however, will generate change cycles that automatically involve those decision-makers who can make an additional contribution.
Increase productivity with advisor technologies
Our advisor technologies support you in shaping the process flow and give you lean control over your engineering change management.
Identify cost drivers quickly
The selection advisor already supports you during the request phase, recognizing potential impacts by detecting uses far beyond pure component uses. This enables quick and easy identification of cost drivers and offers you an early indication of whether a planned change will pay off.
Carry out recurring activities automatically
The execute advisor helps you to automate recurring, usually work-intensive tasks such as individual or bundled activities regarding status changes of documents, materials and parts lists. In combination with the decision advisor, it reacts automatically to the status of documents that need to be processed or generated. This lets you insert event triggers into your milestones that react not only to the presence of objects, but also to their status.
Manage engineering change processes holistically
APM is of course integrated with the relevant SAP engineering change management functions such as the change master and the change record. However, it expands these standards to give our clients from the manufacturing industry cross-board control over their engineering change processes a well as the means to react to specific requirements.
Your benefits with cenitCONNECT APM
- Early recognition of consequences for better decisions
- Significant improvements through the system-based implementation of the change
- Flexible workflow engine with pre-built process models based on best practices
- Automation of repetitive, time-consuming work steps
- Review and approval of tasks based on the multiple-eyes principle
- Time and effort savings through parallelization of process steps
- Flexible use for SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA
- Complete transparency of ongoing change processes through simple reporting
- Sustainable management through well-considered and safeguarded decisions
No matter whether you are a medium-scale company or a major corporation, whether a mechanical engineering, automotive, high-tech or other manufacturing industry business: Our dedicated experts for engineering change management, assisted by our organizational and process consulting experts, are ready to assist you in shaping the ideal engineering change process for your specific needs.
