What Is an Engineering Change Request (ECR)?

Defining the Engineering Change Request (ECR)

Discrete manufacturers seeking competitive advantage today truly understand and master engineering change management. Evolving market requirements, volatile regulatory regimes, shifts in demand, and supply chain dynamics can all trigger the need for adjustments to a product’s design and bill of materials. The Engineering Change Request (ECR) is a pivotal step in the overall change management process.

What is the role of an ECR and why is it important?

The ECR is a formal proposal for modifications or adjustments to an established product or process. It is used to review and align on the business and technical justification for a change. It’s especially important that the ECR be accurate and clearly executed because if approved, it will lead to the issuance of an Engineering Change Notice (sometimes referred to as an Engineering Change Order or ECO), and initiate action. All subsequent related actions will proceed from the information it captures and conveys.

The ECR is essential for maintaining product performance and integrity, so it has a significant impact on enterprise priorities like cost control, quality management, and regulatory compliance. Because it captures the origins of the issue, describes options for addressing it, and highlights the preferred approach, it’s central to maintaining a proper history of the product itself.

What should an ECR form capture?

Proper documentation of the change under consideration, and its various implications, is captured in a standardized form - a crucial tool for making sound business decisions. Well-established best practices in change management suggest at least the following information:

• A description of the problem (or opportunity) that has been identified as requiring a change
• A thorough explanation of the change being proposed, including the level of complexity
• Expected benefits of implementing the change
• The anticipated recurring and non-recurring costs resulting from the change
• The importance of the change relative to other priorities (i.e. low, medium, high)
• Part numbers or SKU’s that are affected, and whether the change impacts other parts
• Descriptions of the parts
• The originator’s name, position, and the date of submission
• Dependencies and the names and roles of stakeholders who will be affected
• Sections for capturing stakeholders’ feedback and assessments
• Any other actions required to resolve the issue
• Any target timelines and deadlines

What is the ECR process?

A standardized and structured process for handling the ECR ensures that each change is properly vetted, and implemented effectively, imposing as little friction as possible on manufacturing operations.

1. Problem identification: ECR’s can be triggered by any number of events, such as a customer complaint; an idea for improvement; field problems caused by non-conforming materials and process failure codes, and more.
2. Documentation: As described above in the ECR form discussion, detailed documentation is critical to inform the assessment phase to follow.
3. Review and evaluation: A cross-functional team, often described as a “Change Review Board,” evaluates the impacts, benefits and costs of the proposed change, and may suggest amendments or alternatives.
4. Approval/rejection: The change review board may then greenlight the final form of the request and issue an Engineering Change Notice, request additional information, or reject it altogether.
5. Planning: When the ECR is approved, the team must develop a detailed plan for implementation.
6. Execution: Following the plan, the change is implemented. Execution may require changes to materials, machines, software, supply chain, and even to re-training. This step also includes updating documentation as needed to ensure the change is smoothly propagated.
7. Validation: Once the change has been fully implemented, the change should be rigorously tested to confirm that the effects have been as intended, and that the change has not introduced any new, unanticipated issues.
8. Closure: After validation, the change process can be formally closed out.
9. Monitoring: Ongoing monitoring confirms that the change’s intended benefits continue as expected.

8 examples of change requests

Not every change to a company’s process or products involves an ECR. The dynamic nature and daunting complexity of discrete manufacturing has driven the evolution of a wide array of specialized change requests. By tailoring change requests to the specific nature of the problem or issue, information particular to a given type of situation can be emphasized. Details relevant to an ECR for example, may be superfluous for another type of change request. Though the list below is not exhaustive, it’s important to understand the distinctions between the most common change request types.

Engineering change request (ECR)

As this discussion has described in detail, the ECR initiates changes to a product’s design or the processes by which it’s manufactured. If approved, it moves a change to the next management stage, the ECN.

Manufacturing change request (MCR)

An MCR formally proposes changes to a manufacturing process which may be—but is not necessarily—related to product changes. It may also be driven by the need for process changes intrinsic to manufacturing operations or product data, although not to the product itself.

Document change request (DCR)

This type of request is specific to changes in the documentation process. This generally involves updates to specs, manuals, or work instructions, often to improve the clarity and usability of documentation or to correct errors.

Corrective action request (CAR)

The CAR proposes changes in response to problems that are identified in ongoing processes and existing processes. Often these are specifically related to safety and require immediate attention.

Preventive action request (PAR)

To avoid the need for CARs, PARs are intended to address potential manufacturing problems or product defects before they occur. Changes initiated through PARs may be the result of trend analysis or issues identified during regular inspections and audits.

Field failure request (FFR)

Generally, an FFR is issued in response to an end-user experiencing a failure “in the field.” By documenting these requests along with as much context as can be gathered from the affected end-user, changes can be affected to prevent recurrence.

Supplier corrective action request (SCAR)

When a supplier has been identified as delivering deficient products or services to the manufacturer, a SCAR may be issued requesting that the deficiencies be corrected. It’s often used in quality management to hold suppliers accountable to their contractual agreements and obligations.

Engineering release notice (ERN)

This type of change notice is most common in defense and medical manufacturing and is deployed to make changes to mission-critical components or end products.

How can you manage ECR with PLM?

Engineering change management, though a complex process overall, seeks a very simple result: the quick, effective and efficient response to engineering change requests—ECO’s, ECN’s and ECR’s as discussed here. Managing ECR with PLM is where your investment begins to pay dividends, even beyond engineering. PLM synchronizes engineering change requests to a shared database—a single source of truth—and makes it accessible to all interested parties in real time for review and feedback. It then integrates the ECR within the larger sequential change management workflow, including the engineering change notice (ECN). The result is shorter review cycles, streamlined manufacturing processes, better, more competitive products, and increased customer satisfaction. From conceptualization through end-of-life, change management in PLM allows users to manage control over revisions to designs, items, and records.

Engineering leaders will see their entire operations become more efficient, with improved product quality, streamlined change execution and enterprise alignment, enabling them to dial up the ability fund more projects. And because product designers are working with advanced planners early in the cycle, working together they are better able to hit cost targets—and manufacturing is ready to go soon after product release because they are working in parallel.