Express engineering change management

Change is perhaps the most persistent aspect of product development. It could arise from external input that must be overcome but also from an explicit choice for improvement. In spite of this general appreciation, the management of engineering changes in development processes is lacking. Only recently this subject has started to attract a growing number of studies attempting to tame the impact of change on development processes. We propose that a plan for addressing change must include the use of carefully designed collection of design methods, termed design methodology. Such methodology must be tailored to the particular design context. We demonstrate through a case study, in the context of a high school mechatronics design course, that such a methodology leads to highly effective engineering change management. We conjecture that similar practices would be effective in industrial settings.