Research And Development Of Engineering Change Management System Based On Design Structure Matrix

Product development involves massive Engineering Changes, both to eliminate mistakes that have been made during the initial design and manufacturing process, and to adapt the design to new requirements. Engineering Changes will prolong the time of product development and increase product cost more or less. The ability to manage engineering changes (ECs) efficiently reflects the agility of an enterprise.This paper utilizes the rationale of Design Structure Matrix (DSM) to research into Engineering Change Management (ECM), and the main research work conducted includes the following issues:Firstly, a summary of the theories and applications related to Engineering Change Management is presented, and then the research objectives of this thesis are given.Secondly, the rationale of DSM is introduced, and object model and analysis flow of EC impact are respectively constructed base on DSM. Furthermore, a method used to analysis the change propagation impact is presented. An expression form of change propagation data based on XML is also given.Thirdly, a method for preliminary prediction of ECM is given, further a novel method via parts clustering and classification to predict the change propagation based on DSM and graphics theory is presented.Finally, system design of ECM application is introduced based on above-mentioned object model and analysis flow as well as the proposed prediction method, some applications of typical key technologies such as VML, AJAX for software development are presented, and an engineering application example is given to illustrate the developed system. Prospects concerning about ECM in the future are carried through.