We are approaching a redesign of our engineering change processes. One key is an active, efficient change control board. What suggestions can you provide for achieving a culture dedicated to managing change?
Best practice is to have cross-functional teams involved in product change requests early in the process so all areas can weigh in on design, cost, implementation, etc. I expect our biggest challenge will be changing to a culture committed to managing change proactivly from one where reacting to change is the norm. I'm seeking advice on how to organize teams where accountants are not wasting time during purchasing lead-time discussions and engineers are not wasting time during inventory discussions, etc. The change process benefits when early input is given by the affected areas but not all areas need be involved in every change. What can be done to help areas weed-out relevant requests? Often, the requestor doesn't know what areas will or will not be affected.
Good Answers (6)
Change management is very difficult, this is a great question. I have found that creating a learning organization is a great way to achieve this type of culture. Peter Senge's book, the Fifth Discipline, describes some foundational principles to create a learning organization. I have seen these concepts work first hand. I'd suggest to start there. Best of luck!
Links:
Hauke S.
Vice President, GHR Shared Services PMO at State Street
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Jim,
you are correct in your assessment on change control boards and organizational practice when it comes to change management. Having run a change control board (CCB) in the past I have found the following things to be helpful to drive a proactive approach:
1. Implement a CR (change request) process
This will enable all appropriate functions to give feedback to any change proposal. Give all functions input as to their level of required involvement in the change.
2. Have the CCB review all CRs as to their status of completion per the process. Do not discuss the details in the CCB. This is important as you otherwise will lose efficiency.
3. Have the CCB approve all CRs prior to execution and implementation. This means you need to have the correct functional makeup of decission makers in your CCB. You need independant decission authority by the CCB. If this is not the case, the CCB will only be a filter function and potentially hinder the efficiency.
Overal I know CCBs, if implemented correctly, can significantly increase the efficiency of any change management process and deliver bottom line results. Empowered CCBs always look at the total cost of ownership (TCO) of any change and increase the bottom line of organizations.
Joseph M.
Operations Controller at Stant Corporation
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While at Robert Bosch I had the opportunity to participate with Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kantor and Goodmeasure consulting out of HBS. One key tool introduced to us that we further developed for our specific situation was The Change Wheel. This wheel has ten spokes or attributes for the successful implementation of organizational change. To develop a culture that embraces change you need a process to introduce and support change. Included is a link with more detail on The Change Wheel.
Links:
Try categorizing the changes based on effect, risk, reward, process, technology, etc. and have different paths or gates for each category or groups of categories. This reduces wasted time on low risk / effect changes, creates energy and buy in for high reward changes, and insures correct input is given to suppliers and customers of processes and technology changes.
Make sure the organization has a good understanding of their processes including inputs, outputs, and links. A process mapping initiative may be needed prior to change process re-engineering. Look at value stream mapping, ISO 9001, turtle diagrams and/or consultants for help if needed to understand and define the high and mid-level processes. This needs to be cross functional so that everyone can see what the others go through and need. Its usually very eye opening and helps move the culture change.
Hi Jim,
I have seen a change management procedure/software to fail in its implementation twice, and one to succeed. The answer from Hauke Schupp is a pretty good guideline.
I could summarize attention points to:
* you need a short cut to simpler issues, daily shop floor changes. If you build a process that is too rigid, your company will find ways to not use it
* as commitment may be fragile in some areas, be sure to have key "gatekeeper" on board and engaged. Depending on the type of business you run purchasing is key, and/or an in-house tooling shop
* spend some time and some money selling of why this is being implemented and both the benefits it will bring to the organization and some fact based problems you had because you don't have it implemented.
* When you get your draft done, spend a week to make it simpler and shorter, compromise if impacts are small. Use FMEA like evaluation. If you can make it one page, your chances will increase.
* be stubborn on the periodic reviews, and make then according to the dynamics of your product/service. a car manufacturer may run it twice a year for series modes, but do it weekly during pre-launching time. If you are not that dedicated yourself empower and delegate to someone that naturally is.
Good luck!
Marlon A Neves
David J (Joe) A.
Principal at Inventory Curve, LLC
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It appears that many of the responses so far seem to be more directed to a generalized cultural change management process rather than the specific engineering change process. Hauke has good comments on the Engineering change process and I will expand on the process as well.
You should have a formal change process that is documented with not only process steps and who will be involved.
I believe a key piece for any ECO (engineering change order) process is to prioritize the change requests. Factors that should be considered include:
* Who is requesting/driving the change? Customer, Supplier, Internal, etc.
* What is the level of urgency for the change?
* Why is the change being considered? Safety, quality, cost, product enhancement, etc.
By creating a prioritization process and scheme, you will focus effort in the right areas.
Much detailed work must be done on ECR's (engineering change requests) before they are reviewed in the change board meetings as Hauke has noted. The board should be for progress review and formal sign-offs, not hashing over details of specific requests.
It is important that ALL groups be involved in the review and the sign-off process. It may turn out that a specific group will not be affected, but they are the ones that need to make that decision. As such, it is critical that they review each proposal, make a determination as to their involvement and sign-off, even if it is only to indicate that the change does not affect them.
One other thing to keep in mind. Back in the late 80's, Professors Hays, Clarke and Wheelwright at Harvard Business School did a major study on factory productivity. A surprising and unexpected finding was that ECO implementations, if not well coordinated and managed could have serious debilitating effects on total factory productivity.
More Answers (5)
Sunny D.
CIO Quantum Holdings
Best Answers in: Purchasing (2), Business Analytics (1), Supply Chain Management (1), Market Research and Definition (1), Enterprise Software (1)
Culture Change is tough cookie. What we have see is that it is easy to implement automation and new processes with feed back form everyone in the supply chain process.
What you need is a Requisition system with approval and feedback process. This way the Accountants, Engineers and Purchasing Managers all have feedback ability. A system that takes in account jobs, projects, G/L accounts, etc.
Links:
Srinivasa Rao D. suggests this expert on this topic:
Does the culture need to shift to management or change? The answer may be in the question…if the culture is primarily management centric then change is anti-management since management by inference is a herding function. Change centric cultures invariably are rebels and follow few standard management profiles. So if the idea is to get the 2 groups to cooperate, leverage and celebrate their uniqueness rather than create hybrid non-functioning teams.
The solution is to create a cooperative culture dedicated to the profitability of the company. Taking the focus off of change or management and placing it on profit (the end goal of both types) will catalyze direction and results. So back to the question…maybe the solution is in the name, or a name change, how about profit management?
To correlate this to a more meaningful symbol of unity, charge the shareholders with mind-manager software (i.e. Mindjet) as the tool. Allow for inputs and reduce the meetings to submissions of logical outcomes based on data so that the culture focuses strictly on performance rather than protocols or synergies.
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The cross functional teams I have been involved in always allow a representative from each group to attend each of the other groups’ meetings. Similar to your example, the engineering group should discuss their issues, but one lead account should be present to evaluate an accounting / engineering question. In some cases the leaders may determine that the issue may need to be escalated to another group for in-depth analysis or a response. The continuity from one group discussion to another is maintained by the leader of each group. The manager of the teams will help guide the process and channel the issues to be escalated to the appropriate teams.
Once the teams find the process to organize their ideas, develop a plan, escalate road blocks and problem solve, the cultural transition begins. My only suggestion is to respond to the team issues or escalations in an expedited manner.
Richard R.
President/Principal and Consultant at New Level Advisors.--- Business Writer --- Interim Operating Executive
There are a lot of different things mixed up here. First, from a culture change standpoint - get sales, operations, engineering, quality and accounting leadership together and establish goals for improvement of the process and metrics for both leading indictors, such as changes in process, and lagging indicators such as changes dispositioned within target time frames, changes completed within target, etc. Then institute a monthly meeting to review progress on improving the process with these stakeholders.
Second is the process itself. I concur that changes should be categorized. There are emergency changes, editorial changes, changes that are required but can take some time, and changes that are good ideas but not really essential. Each should have a different path. Within the categories, some changes will be transparent to customers and don't require sales review. Some will not affect standard cost and may not require accounting review. Set up the change request process to insure questions like that are answered early, so departments which don't need to be involved can be bypassed.
Last, use some technology. A very low cost approach would be setting up the change requests and dispositioning via MS Access forms. Queries can be created and run daily or more frequently to alert the various departments that they have change requests to review. It can be a very inexpensive but effective work flow. Alternatively, you can get more sophisticated with purchased work flow software, email notifications and so on.
The first step is the most critical. You must get the stakeholders to agree that the current process is broken and make commitments of manpower and priority to reach agreed-upon goals. Otherwise the rest is just infrastructure and it will still take forever to get anything done.
