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Engineering changes are inevitable and might propagate within and across multiple boundaries. Their management has increasingly become relevant within the interdisciplinary field of systems engineering. A few literature categorization frameworks arising from literature reviews have been proposed to structure the research field of engineering change management. However, the literature reviews are limited in scope, and the existing categorization frameworks do not provide sufficient coverage of the research field in its broader context. This paper addresses both shortcomings. First, a new, holistic and process-oriented literature categorization framework is proposed. Second, this proposed framework is used to categorize a comprehensive list of 427 publications in engineering change management. This categorization highlights not only research areas which have gained much attention, but also those where little research has been done. Third, a citation analysis is conducted which reveals the links between the publications and indicates the most cited publications. The result of this paper will help researchers and managers to (1) navigate through the state of the art in engineering change management, (2) position their work in the overall picture of engineering change management, (3) focus on the identified research gaps and weak points, and (4) search for further research and improvement opportunities. 473 Regular Paperalong the EC process. Second, it provides a relatively complete picture of research in ECM by positioning 384 journal articles and conference papers and 43 books, book sections, and reports in the proposed framework. Third, it presents a citation analysis for selected publications of the core ECM categories. The paper is structured in five remaining sections. Section 2 provides the background for the proposed categorization framework by defining EC and ECM and elaborating existing literature reviews and categorization frameworks. Section 3 introduces the proposed categorization framework. Section 4 presents the literature survey, positioning, and citation analysis; Section 5 discusses those results; and Section 6 concludes the paper.

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Engineering change (EC) is a source of uncertainty. While the number of changes to a design can be optimized, their existence cannot be eliminated. Each change is accompanied by intended and unintended impacts both of which might propagate and cause further knock-on changes. Such change propagation causes uncertainty in design time, cost, and quality and thus needs to be predicted and controlled. Current engineering change propagation models map the product connectivity into a single-domain network and model change propagation as spread within this network. Those models miss out most dependencies from other domains and suffer from “hidden dependencies”. This paper proposes the function-behavior-structure (FBS) linkage model, a multidomain model which combines concepts of both the function-behavior-structure model from Gero and colleagues with the change prediction method (CPM) from Clarkson and colleagues. The FBS linkage model is represented in a network and a corresponding multidomain matrix of structural, behavioral, and functional elements and their links. Change propagation is described as spread in that network using principles of graph theory. The model is applied to a diesel engine. The results show that the FBS linkage model is promising and improves current methods in several ways: The model (1) accounts explicitly for all possible dependencies between product elements, (2) allows capturing and modeling of all relevant change requests, (3) improves the understanding of why and how changes propagate, (4) is scalable to different levels of decomposition, and (5) is flexible to present the results on different levels of abstraction. All these features of the FBS linkage model can help control and counteract change propagation and reduce uncertainty and risk in design.

A simulation model to help manage change propagation through design workflows is introduced. The model predicts resource requirements and schedule risk of a change process, accounting for concurrency, multiple sources of change, and iterations during redesign. Visualizations provide insight to answer common management questions. The approach is illustrated using an aircraft design workflow from Airbus and a more complex turbine disk design workflow from Rolls–Royce.

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An approach to cope with changing market needs is to design engineering systems that can be changed easily. However, in order to identify suitable candidates to be made more changeable, one has to be able to analyse the changeability of engineering systems. Hence, this paper introduces a dependency modelling technique that seeks to support companies in assessing the changeability of complex engineering systems. The research was carried out based on the design research methodology with a focus on method development. The primary result of this work is the provision of a design support that can be used to provide an estimation of system changeability by examining (1) the initiating points of change, (2) the direct propagation of change, (3) the indirect propagation of change, (4) the likelihood of change, and (5) the impact or effort of change. The technique developed uses a matrix-based approach and draws on the change prediction method to generate change indices for individual system components. By referring to the change indices generated, the changeability of engineering systems can be examined systematically. A heavy-duty diesel engine is used in this work as an example to demonstrate how the technique can be applied.