Managing the process of engineering change orders: The case of the climatecontrol system in automobile development

Engineering change orders (ECOs) are part of almost every development proce ss, consuming a significant parr of engineering capacity and contributing h eavily to development and tool costs. Many companies use a support process to administer ECOs, which fundamentally determines ECO costs. This administ rative process encompasses the emergence of a change (e.g., a problem or a market-driven feature change), the management approval of the change, rip t o the change's final implementation. Despite the tremendous time pressure i n development Projects in general and in the ECO process in particular, thi s process can consume several weeks, several months, and in Extreme cases e ven over I year. Based on an in-depth case study of the climate control sys tem development in a I,chicle, we identify five key contributors to long EC O lead times: a complex approval process, snowballing changes, scarce capac ity and congestion, setups and batching, and orgaizational issues. Based on the case observations, we outline a number of improvement strategies an or ganization can follow to reduce its ECO lean times. (C) 1999 Elsevier Scien ce Inc.