Change impact and risk analysis (CIRA) : combining the CPM/PDD theory and FMEA-methodology for an improved engineering change management

Abstract

The change process is one of the most critical tasks of the product development process. Misinterpretation or lack of knowledge about impacts or risks of changes can cause serious disadvantages to companies, e.g. high failure or change costs or image losses caused by products with a quality that is unacceptable. Supervising the change process is a challenging task; an important part of this task is the analysis and assessment of risks and impacts of changes. This contribution presents an approach to support the process of analysing and assessing the effects of changes in the product development process. The approach is based on two methods: First on the CPM/PDD theory developed at the Institute of Engineering Design/CAD in order to synthesise potential solutions to change requests and to ana-lyse their impacts; second on the common Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)-method in order to assess the risks and impacts of changes and to document the analysis.