Accelerating the Process of Engineering Change Orders: Capacity and Congestion Effects

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
Operations, Information and Decisions Papers
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods
Other Engineering
Technology and Innovation
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Loch, Christoph H
Terwiesch, Christian
Contributor
Abstract

Engineering change orders (ECOs) are important drivers of development costs and lead time. This article analyzes the process of administering engineering change orders in the case of the climate control system development within a large vehicle development project. This administrative process encompasses the emergence of a change (e.g., a problem or a market-driven feature change), its management approval, and final implementation. Despite strong time pressure, this process can take several weeks, several months, and, in extreme cases, even over 1 year. Such a long lead time is especially remarkable as the actual processing time for the change typically does not exceed 2 weeks. Based on our case study, we develop an analytical framework that explains how such an extreme ratio between theoretical processing time and actual lead time is possible. The framework identifies congestion, stemming from scarce capacity coupled with processing variability, as a major lead time contributor. We outline five improvement strategies that an organization can use in order to reduce ECO lead time, namely, flexible capacity, balanced workloads, merged tasks, pooling, and reduced setups and batching.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
1999-03-01
Journal title
Journal of Product Innovation Management
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection