Management Of Changes In Automotive Paint Technology And Process Transfer In D Company

In order to comply with national standard on automotive paint emission control enacted since Sept 2009, Company D needs to conduct a technology conversion to over hundred products by June 1st, 2010 without impacting the current delivery and supply to the customer. To deal with this big scope of changes, this article discussed from organization change management point of view on how to achieve people awareness of the project and obtain enough resources, also from micro management methodology point of view on how to micro manage each change triggered by this technology conversion.We analyzed the impact from the technology conversion project to the business areas in product development, process and capacity, inventory and supply chain, customer service, etc. The gap to perfect in change management process also identified base on the impact analysis. Major gaps are in organization structure, documented procedures and guidelines, review and authorizations, tracking and monitoring, technical competency and awareness.Base on the impact and gap analysis, from organization change management point of view, we defined the project objectives, target and integrated project plan with initial roadmap drawn in A3 and roles and responsibilities clarified. All the tasks, targets, milestones are listed. Steering team and sub teams were set up. ABCD report template developed for monthly review reporting in order to communicate issues and make decisions effectively. Change management is decided to be part of the project.The most important part is to micro manage each changes brought by the technology conversion, we established a change management process flow and defined the key roles and responsibilities. The change request and approval forms and communication forms are also designed to initiate the changes. Change classification guidelines are developed for safety and quality related changes separately. After required actions implemented, a defined checklist to check the implementation status before change closure is required. At the end, all the documentations related to each specific change are archived for future reference. For the tracking and management of the change process, change manager built up and maintained a change tracker for each change initiated to ensure the changes are under control. And the integrated change coordination and management allows us to summarize the lessons learned and leverage to similar changes to accelerate the process and maximize the benefits from the changes. Finally, we conducted promotion campaign for the change management procedure and guidelines. At the same time, success stories and incident sharing from historical data were developed to standard training materials and shared with employees on a monthly basis. With all the above mentioned efforts, it improved the awareness and mindset of change management in all employees and the change management system started to be a daily management tool for the company.This change management system established during technology conversion project then shared and applied in global automotive paint business unit, which helped the business to manage all future changes related to technology, production, business and capacity and quality improvement effective and brought an improved profitability to the company.