施圍信

Engineering change management is one of the critical activities in engineering process. Meanwhile, in allied concurrent engineering, the importance and difficulty of engineering change management is increased due to the increasing variety and complication of engineering data, the complexity of distributed and collaborative engineering activities, and the heterogeneity of computer-based environment. This study presents an integrated engineering change management approach for the practice of allied concurrent engineering (ACE). An ACE-based engineering change management methodology was developed under the concepts of enterprise integration to manage the processes, systems and information of engineering changes in an integrated fashion both within an individual enterprise and the enterprise alliance. The methodology includes a life cycle model for engineering change, a hierarchical and distributed management framework, and a reference model for engineering change management. Based on this methodology, an ACE-based engineering change management system is developed using Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling techniques. Besides the methodology and the system for engineering change management, this work also demonstrates a systematic approach for enterprise system development. Results in this investigation will enable the practice of allied concurrent engineering and subsequently increase product development capability and quality, reduce development cycle time, cost and ultimately increase product marketability.