The Research Of Engineering Change Management In Collaborative Working Environment

Engineering Changes will prolong the time of product development and increase product cost more or less. The aim of effective managing Engineering Changes is to avoid the occurring of changes, and to accelerate treating of changes. Computer Supported Collaborative Working (CSCW) provides a new working environment and change working manner. The engineering changes in CSCW are characterized by distribution and parallel, and change handling needs cooperative work among different teams. All of these will make the process of change handling more complexity and need new technology research.Aiming at the characteristic of Engineering Changes in CSCW, this paper discusses the method of the handling of Engineering Changes. The main work of the paper is as follow:Firstly, a ECM model is put forward, which abstracts general ECM process as three steps (require, evaluation, implement). Five EC objects which include ECR, ECE, EAA, ECO, ECA are used to organize these steps.Secondly, the paper brings forward a closed loop model for ECM workflow. Based on the concept of lifecycle, the collaboration and synchronization in ECM workflows are implemented.Thirdly, a method which is used to analysis the change propagating is presented. Change-oriented product structure is constructed. An expression method of change propagating data based on XML is presented..Finally, an application of ECM in CSCW is given, and prospects concerning about ECM in the future are carried through.