Advanced Engineering Change Impact Approach (AECIA) – Towards a model-based approach for a continuous Engineering Change Management

A large share of resources in product engineering is occupied by engineering changes. High complexity of networked advanced systems is an important cause. In order to cope with high complexity, Model-Based Systems Engineering is seen as a possible approach. The Advanced Engineering Change Impact Approach – AECIA presents a model-based Engineering Change Management – ECM approach that supports a holistic propagation and impact analysis as well as the communication of engineering changes. For this purpose, practice-relevant requirements are identified and, based on these, analysis and modeling activities of the ECM approach are derived. The identified activities are grouped into activity groups that systematically support the validation of incoming change requests, the analysis and modeling of change propagation and impact, and the communication and documentation of change information for an agile engineering environment. The presented Advanced Engineering Change Impact Approach addresses the identified requirements and thus enables an iterative, agile as well as model-based engineering change management.