Change

[joe2244]

Hi,

We’re having some healthy debate as to whether we should change our approach to change management.

Presently we control our parts via a combination of a part version and revision of a BOM. This works quite well. This gives the benefit that if you make a minor change you don’t have to up version all parent parts.
At the moment is permissible to make a material change to BOM but not change the version of the part. Whilst this is probably okay in very small organization, as the business grows its getter harder to educate users that if a change is significant then the part version should be changed as well.

We are giving due consideration to mandating that only non-material changes can be managed through BoM revisions, i.e. you make a typo in the BOM, any other changes must be made by versioning the part.

I can sense a degree of trepidation with this approach; however I consider this to be a good robust solution.

Any thoughts?

 

[truckandbus]

I think you are approaching this correctly. Putting the process in place before you grow will make that growth period easier. I deal with a lot of legacy issues caused by my company's lax processes used when they were a small manufacturer.

Please reconsider the idea of not percolating revisions to the higher assemblies - if you ever get into a recall situation the practice pays for itself

 

[ptruitt]

Do you have a formal definition of interchangeability? Does each product have a product design specification to use as the basis of making interchangeability decisions?

Peter Truitt
Minnesota