Distributed engineering change management for allied concurrent engineering

Effectively managing engineering change is a critical task in engineering management. Meanwhile, in allied concurrent engineering, the importance and difficulty of engineering change management is increased. This study presents a distributed engineering change management approach for the practice of allied concurrent engineering (ACE). An ACE-based engineering change management methodology was developed under the concepts of enterprise integration to manage the processes, systems and information of engineering change in an integrated fashion both within an individual enterprise and the enterprise alliance. The methodology includes a life cycle model for engineering change management, a hierarchical and distributed management framework, and a reference model for engineering change management. Based on this methodology, an ACE-based engineering change management system is developed using Unified Modelling Language (UML) modelling techniques. In additon to the methodology and the system for engineering change management, this work also demonstrates a systematic approach for enterprise system development. Results in this investigation will enable the practice of allied concurrent engineering and subsequently increase product development capability and quality, reduce development cycle time and cost and ultimately increase product marketability.