Technology is evolving rapidly. To stay competitive in this ever-changing market, manufacturers must deliver faster products that are not only reliable but customized to the client’s needs. Technical changes introduced by multiple configurations of a product increase management complexity which can lead to significant delivery delay.
Change management offers a structured approach for planning and implementing changes throughout the product development. As a crucial part of ISO 9001, it ensures certified companies have the right tools and process to manage change effectively and maintain product quality.
A great platform such as the 3DEXPERIENCE leverages the best practices of this highly regarded standard to offer a suite of tools for streamlined change management.
What set the 3DEXPERIENCE platform apart? Its integrated approach that enables stakeholders from various discipline to collaborate in real time on up-to-date data.
We will explore other key benefits of the platform in change management such as: scalable end-to-end processes and automated workflows with close-loop traceability.
The Challenge of Change Management
According to this McKinsey’s article, the root cause of the delays in advanced industries is the lack of proper tools to manage technical changes. Unfortunately, some companies still rely on emails and meetings to communicate the actions necessary to implement changes. The impact of such habits is reflected in a survey that was conducted by Tech Clarity.
It reveals that communicating the implementation of change to a team can take up to:
- 4.7 days for a simple product
- 10.3 days for complex product
72% of non-value-added activity can be attributed to inefficient data management. Considering that engineers must develop products rapidly, inaccurate data increase risk of rework and can significantly impact their productivity.
Managing coordination of changes becomes complex when information comes from multiple sources. This often results in the need for frequent meetings and manual data updates to manage changes effectively. In most cases, without well defined and consistently applied business processes, team members are likely to avoid these burdensome procedures that add little to no value to the product development process.
1. Real-Time Collaboration
As a PLM solution, 3DEXPERIENCE unify the entire organisation under a unique change management process. From Engineering to Manufacturing, including sourcing and marketing, the platform enables teams to communicate change efficiently across the enterprise. All product-related data are centralized, facilitating multidisciplinary collaboration for innovation. By swiftly communicating change decisions and assignments to all impacted organizations, product development cycle time is reduced considerably.
2. Embedded workflows
In 3DEXPERIENCE, organizations can leverage Routes to make collaboration more efficient within the context of change management. These are predefined, customized workflows that changes follow within an organization, serving to standardize and optimize change management processes while keeping all necessary stakeholders informed.
Routes can be initiated by external factors, like regulatory changes, or internal factors such as process inefficiencies. Routes can be used as well to approve the implementation of engineering changes by including the necessary discipline such as engineering, manufacturing, and quality control in the process. Furthermore, all the activities within a Route are recorded, allowing for the review and auditing of decision approvers at any time.
3. Reporting systems
3DEXPERIENCE’s robust reporting systems offer a layer of invisible oversight for the upper management. The automated reporting systems provide real-time insight into organizational operations. The platform enables managers to easily monitor the status of the changes, track their implementation, and assess the overall impact on product development and delivery; thereby enabling data-driven decision by management.
By integrating technical process with a comprehensive reporting, companies ensure smooth functioning of their projects while providing transparency and accountability to the upper management. Both Routes and Reporting Systems enhance operational efficiency and strategic oversight in change management.
4. End-To-End Change Management Process
The 3DEXPERIENCE offer out of the box an End-to-end change management process complete with predefined objects and activities to manage changes from initiation to completion. Under one consistent and standardize change process, an organisation can:
- raise an Issue for simple product changes; or create Change Request for major implementation requiring impact analysis.
- orchestrate under a Change Order multiple actions to complete changes.
- track realized changes that was executed by a technical assignee using a Change Action
5. Scalability
The platform is scalable, accommodating changes based on the project’s size and the organization’s complexity. For simple product changes, a fast route with a straightforward change action can be used. For more complex change, you can leverage change request to analyse the impacts of the implementation and Change Order to group changes by disciplines. Beyond Engineering Changes, 3DEXPERIENCE can also manage manufacturing and services changes. Below, you can see 3 examples of path that an enterprise can implement to manage change in the product development cycle. (Reference)
6. Automated workflow
The End-to-End Change management process in 3DEXPERIENCE is design to streamline and automate the entire change management workflow. To enforce traceability, the change objects discussed previously are connected in a loop. Information between the objects is propagated throughout the change resolution process, reducing non-value-added activities.
3DPlay → 3DMarkup → Issue Management → Change Action (For design review process)
The automation in the change management process reduces non-value-added activities such as updating manually and propagating change across an organization.
Key takeaways to ease change management
Why not leverage a platform like 3DEXPERIENCE to streamline the change management process required for product’s lifecycle?
- Reduce non-value-added activities and increase engineers’ time on innovation;
- Foster collaboration across the entire organization to reduce errors.
- Provide the necessary tools and processes to manage product changes, from the initiation to the implementation.
- Provides out of the box, End-to-End change management process to support your enterprise product development initiatives.
- Provides visibility to all stakeholders on product development.
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