Investigation of Change in Specifications During a Product's Lifecycle

Abstract

Engineering changes (ECs) constitutes a normal part of a product?s lifecycle. This paper aims to understand why changes are made to a product's specification during a product's lifecycle including understanding: the distribution of changes, the drivers for changes, how changes are discovered, which design attributes likely be changed, the initiation of change and how change in specifications are described. For this purpose, document analysis for a complex product has been carried out. In total, 271 reports of change request of an aero-engine that were associated to change in specifications were examined qualitative and quantitatively. Several patterns of the change in specifications were quantified and observed. The findings showed that the majority of changes were found in the manufacture/build and testing phase and most of these changes were described in terms of need and solution regardless of how the request was initiated. The study showed that experience plays a vital role in discovering the need to change a complex product.