Management of engineering changes to reduce negative impacts on the implementation process

Abstract

This article presents the results of the simulation made in Bizagi®, of how the process of implementing engineering changes is. The simulation includes the interaction of all the departments involved in this process, mentions the activities that must be executed, in addition to having an estimated time to complete the activity. A customer was selected that deals with a low annual volume demand and a high mix in part numbers. The objective of the research is to simulate the current process, to see if the company is complying or failing with the implementation with respect to the agreed time, to see the activities that affect the process, to look for alternatives to reduce the negative times. For this study we worked with a customer who is the most demanding, grouping their products into 3 categories, the company manages a time set by themselves of eight, ten and twelve weeks for implementation respectively, simulating the process with current times, it was confirmed that the company is failing to implement the changes on time, the simulation showed that the production and planning department consumes more time, specifically the activity of delivering the cut to make half processes. The lack of capacity in the company impacts negatively, because they are accepting new business, but are not investing in machinery, an alternative scenario was the proposal to generate a third shift exclusively to cut engineering change requirements that are committed to upcoming dates, this in order to reduce to one week the delivery of the cut, this scenario was simulated and the implementation time is within the agreed time. This scenario was simulated and the implementation time is within the agreed time. The diagram shows activities that can be worked at the same time, to further reduce waiting times between activities.