Change management continues to be an important process in the engineered product environment. It has great potential to deliver material benefits but also great challenges in getting it right. Managing engineering change has always been hard as well as a source of inefficiency, but in the ever-escalating pace of business driven by an increasingly global market, it is more critical than ever to improve the process.

Historically, engineering change management has focused on cost control and increasing process efficiency. Competitive pressures are now driving a new agenda for change management, one that targets a reduction in development lead times and, secondarily, the ability to quickly respond to quality issues. This is a very real change in perspective as companies are beginning to realize that a more optimized engineering change management process can provide top-line benefits in addition to reducing costs. In today’s dynamically changing marketplace, speed-to-market can allow companies to overtake, and even leap-frog, their competition.

The other key driver of this new view of engineering change management is the need for an accelerated response to quality issues. There are also the changing market requirements as competition, globalization and concept of “mass customization” have created a demand chain with the customers driving any number of product permutations. Change management’s ability to positively impact quality is important in both the initial product launch and in ongoing product management.

Through our work with discrete manufacturers of all sizes, American Unit has experienced the value of optimized engineering change management. That led to the investment to develop an add-on module designed specifically for that purpose that augments the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution. American Unit’s Engineering Change Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV can handle different types of engineering change requests including bill of material changes, routing changes, and released production orders which are in shop floor and updates these changes automatically. This add-on module is fully integrated with Dynamics NAV’s manufacturing.

The Engineering Change Management module is the third release in the American Unit manufacturing suite. More information can be found here.