Aras’ Change Management and Impact Matrix
/An Interview with Dave Ewing of Aras (conducted in October 2015)
PPLM:
I have always thought of change management as the heart of an engineering/manufacturing environment. Give us a quick overview of the change management application.
Dave:
The change management application breaks into three parts. There is our CMII compliant change package that is the most comprehensive. It includes the PR, ECR and ECN processes which are typical industry standards. We also have a midline called the Express package that includes the ECO, DCO and something new called the EDR. And finally, we have a simplified version that moves the change process along much more rapidly.
An important enhancement we just released is the Impact Matrix. The current tool gives users the ability to see the impact of their proposed change. So, if they were releasing say a part, they would be able to see the possible impact on other parts or assemblies. With our upgrade they could also see what models, drawings, and/or documents might be affected. Instead of a user having to dig through the various relationships, the Impact Matrix does that work to help the user make a decision.
PPLM:
Does this also translate into routings or the workflow? In addition to understanding impact, would the Impact Matrix also identify the owners that should be included in the workflow?
Dave:
All of our change items include workflows that may be customized. The way that our ECO authoring process works is that when you create your ECO, you can assign a team to the review process. One of the things that we have added to the Impact Matrix is the idea that as you add impacted items, you can group them, and we then spawn child or subordinate changes to the ECO called EDRs. These are only created from the ECO and are a change item created for CAD Documents or Documents. The EDRs have their own lifecycle that is connected to the ECO. Meaning the ECO actually manages the closure of the EDRs to ensure nothing gets out of order.
PPLM:
We touched on some of the benefits of this kind of a solution. In effect, it saves someone from having to hunt through a list to figure out all these relationships. Any other benefits that you want to point out?
Dave:
I think you hit the nail on the head. The biggest benefit that we were driving was from the user perspective in that it takes care of a lot of the project management associated with changes. The example I use is if you are releasing one subsystem of a product, you might have a number of parts that relates to a number of drawings and a number of CAD parts and it turns into a number of documents. Now you can wrap those under one ECO umbrella and have a number of EDR’s for the groups of similar documents, models, etc. However, you want to send those through the system – with a single EDR or many - it takes care of the project management and lets Innovator handle it for you instead.
PPLM:
So from a practical standpoint, getting something like this available, talk briefly about some of the prerequisites an organization might want to have in place before activating this component?
Dave:
First, this component comes right of the box with our open software version. You don’t have to be a subscriber for this code. What I would recommend is to look through your change and configuration management processes. Give them a critical look and make sure you understand what is going on. In that way, as you implement Innovator, you are able to determine if you need to make changes to our out of the box process. You may say, “Hey, what ARAS Innovator offers out of the box is perfect.“ The bottom line is we have focused on helping users get up and running as fast as possible.
PPLM:
Let’s briefly look at the symptoms associated with opportunities. What words might an organization use, or statements they might express, that a tool like this would have relevance in their organization?
Dave:
Any of the synonyms for “impact” would be the triggers. This can include trying to understand the cost associated with a change. Impact in the “where used” and “composed of” relationships. And so on. If a customer were struggling with managing many changes and keeping their product configurations in order, I think our tool will help.