Designing your engineering change workflow
Part 3: Engineering change form template setup
In Part 1 of our discussion, we defined various
engineering change forms and how
they're used to create a complete engineering change process. Part 2
described how
to design an individual engineering change form's workflow.
In this final topic, we'll show how to configure PDXpert PLM software to
reflect your new engineering change process.
Engineering change notice
Every engineering change process requires an implementing change form,
which in PDXpert we call the Engineering Change Notice. We'll review the
software's default ECN template.
Open the Change Form template:
- In the Collection Explorer, expand the Changes group, then expand
the Change Forms collection.
- Double-click the Engineering Change Notice collection
member to open the template window.
- Unlock the window for editing by pressing the
F2 key on your
keyboard.
General tab
- You can modify the Name and
Abbreviation values to suit your
company's preferences, such as "Engineering Change Order"/"ECO" or,
for broader use, "Change Notice"/"CN". Any previously-created change forms based on
the current template will be
updated to use the new name.
- It's a good idea to update the
Description to ensure
your users understand the purpose and application of
the current change form within your own engineering change process.
- In the Identifier sequence, assign the appropriate
change numbering member from the
Sequences: Identifier
collection. You may want to define separate
identifiers for each type of engineering change form
your define. However, assigning every new change
form from a common identifier sequence (as set in
the PDXpert default database) ensures that no one
will ever confuse ECR 1234 with ECN 1234.
- In the Primary discussion text template,
you can specify a prompt that will be displayed to the change form's
originator. To edit the current text template, or to create a new one,
refer to the Text Templates collection.
If you do not want any prompt copied to a new change form, select the
empty line from the dropdown list.
Attributes tab
- If you don't manage the effectivity of each affected item
separately, it's often useful to indicate a starting point for the
change by marking the Display a starting date
and/or serial number checkbox. This allows users to target when
all of the affected items on the change will become effective.
Don't enable the ending boundary, since the ECN represents a permanent
update to the affected items' release/cancel status.
- The Manages revisions on Affected tab checkbox should be marked.
This displays each affected item's revision.
- The Releases/cancels items on Affected tab checkbox should be marked.
Upon approval, we want the affected items' revisions to be
updated from Pending to Released or from Released
to Canceled. This is the essential difference between an
implementing change and all other change types.
Participants tab
- The Reviewing departments list
defines the list of departments that must approve changes of the current
form. You can add to the list by dragging a department/group from
under an Organization member of the
Organizations collection in the
Collection Explorer. You can modify the review notification
order so that one group (say, engineering) is notified of the routed
change before another group (say, manufacturing). Setting a department's
sequence to 1 ensures that department is the first to review the change.
You can assign the same sequence value to any number of departments, and
they will all receive notifications at the same time. (The notification order does not
enforce a specific review sequence; any department can review the change
earlier than specified.)
The reviewer list is a starting point that can be modified when the
actual change is created. You can ensure that a specific department's
participation can't be changed by setting the department to
Locked. The final list of reviewers
should always be the least number that are essential to review
the accuracy and completeness of the ECN.
- The Observers list is where you put
everyone who wants to see the progress and outcome of the engineering
change workflow, but aren't participating in the actual review. Any user can be receive an email notification during the change
workflow by dragging the user's name from the
Persons collection onto the Observers
list. You can designate when these observers are informed of a change's
progress using the lifecycle phases map in the
Workflow tab.
Workflow tab
Each lifecycle state has paths that guide the change through the
workflow. Each path can be enabled or disabled according to certain built-in
rules, and each path can also have certain groups of users notified as the
change moves along that path. Perhaps the simplest way to set the workflow is to ask these questions:
- Does your organization have a person whose role provides for
checking the accuracy and completeness of the Engineering Change Notice
after it's been created, and before it's routed for approval? Such a QA
role may be a separate group called Document Control or Configuration
Management, or an informal role handled by the originator's supervisor.
If the role exists, then enable path #02; otherwise enable path #03 (you
can let your change originator choose by enabling both paths).
- Does your organization have a person whose role provides for
checking the accuracy and completeness of the Engineering Change Notice
after it's been approved by the reviewers, and before it's released? If
the role exists, then enable path #13; otherwise enable path #14. When
the final approval is saved, the system will automatically move the
ECN's lifecycle state to Accepted (for QA) or Released (for immediate
release of all affected items).
- If a reviewer disapproves the change, do you want the change to be
immediately canceled (#11), rejected (#09), returned for rework (#08) or
stopped for further discussion (#10)? We usually recommend that it be
stopped (#10) and the next step considered on a case-by-case basis.
Other change forms: Engineering Change Request
Although configuring other change forms, such as the
Engineering Change Request, is substantially similar to
the Engineering Change Notice, the critical difference
is in two checkbox settings on the
Attributes tab:
- The Releases/cancels items on Affected tab checkbox should be cleared.
Upon approval, we don't want the affected items' revisions to be
released or canceled; that's what the ECN does.
- The Manages revisions on Affected tab checkbox should be cleared.
This displays only the affected items, without any indication of what
the revision is now or will become. We don't know what other changes may
occur before an ECN is processed for this ECR, so we can't say with
certainty what the revision value will be.
Other change forms: Stop Shipment
Although other change forms may use starting and ending boundaries, these
values are particularly relevant to temporary change forms, such as a Stop
Shipment or Deviation. On the
Attributes tab, note that you can enable fields for a starting date
and/or serial (or lot code) number, as well as for an ending date, serial
number, and/or total permitted quantity.
In the case of a Stop Shipment form, you may want to enable only the
ending boundary; the beginning boundary can be enabled if you want it
explicitly set, or the implied value is "immediately". Set the label to
"Resume shipments on" or a similar indication of when a resolution should be
expected.
