ECO Lifecycle

The ECO is processed by moving it through the states in its lifecycle. For example, in the first state, a new ECO is created and connected to the appropriate ECR object. The owner assigns a Responsible Design Engineer and a Responsible Manufacturing Engineer and then promotes the ECO to the Define Components state, where parts and drawing prints are attached to the ECO. The Responsible Design Engineer promotes the ECO to the Design Work state, and so on. Only the owner of a ECO can change its state.

If the ECO is in a route, the route may be set up to prevent the ECO from being promoted until the route is complete.

Each time the ECO is promoted or demoted, a PDF report is generated and checked in to the ECO. In any state before Release, the owner has the option to cancel the ECO.

Information on the deprecated ECO (Standard) policy is no longer included in this documentation. For details on the ECO (Standard) policy, consult the AEF documentation for version V6R2009x or earlier.

The ECO lifecycle includes these states:

Create

An ECO can be created by any user assigned to the Design Engineer or Senior Design Engineer roles. The ECO name is automatically generated. An ECO can be created with or without an ECR. Without an ECO, the ECO creator becomes both the owner and the Responsible Design Engineer (RDE) for the ECO.

If an ECO is created from an ECR, all affected items and assignees from the ECR are copied to the ECO.

When using an ECR as the basis for the ECO, the Responsible Design Engineer of the ECR becomes the Responsible Design Engineer for the ECO. Attributes carried over from the ECR to the ECO include Affected Organizations, Category of Change, Reported Against, Severity and Reason for Change. If the ECR had a distribution list or reviewer list, they are also copied over to the new ECO. All attributes copied from the ECR can be changed except for the related ECR. If an ECO already exists, the reviewer list will not be copied over.

The RDE has overall coordination responsibility of the work to be performed on the ECO and also assigns work on the ECO.

While creating an ECO, the user must select an organization which will have design responsibility. The ECO creator must be a member of that organization and must have an Engineering role within the organization.

The assignees of the affected items on the ECR are carried over as assignees on the ECO. If the ECR does not contain any affected items, the RDE can attach affected items to the affected item list of the ECO.

The RDE can also assign people as assignees on the ECO to work on an affected item. An assignee can add affected items to the ECO and in turn become assigned to work on the respective affected item.

The RDE can assign an approval list at this state to handle the creation of the approval route and assigns the Manufacturing Engineer who needs to review and approve the ECO before releasing it.

The RDE then promotes the ECO to the Define Components state. The RDE retains the ownership of the ECO in the Define Components state.

When the ECO is promoted to the Define Components state, a trigger is run to create new revisions for all affected items with a Requested Change of "Revise." The new revisions are connected to the ECO. In addition, if the old revision contained approved markups, these markups are copied to the new revisions. This trigger can be inactivated, if desired.

Define Components

As the ECO enters the Define Components state, an action fires that automatically routes the ECO to the RDE.

The RDE reviews the ECRs that are attached to the ECO and determines which parts and drawing prints need to be attached to the ECO. The RDE uses the Create Part and Create Drawing pages to create/revise and attach these objects to the ECO using the appropriate relationships. The RDE or assignee can fill in or edit the appropriate Disposition Code and Change Description attributes that are on the relationships. The RDE reviews the attached ECOs and determines if the appropriate parts and specifications have been attached.

The reviewer list is copied from the ECR to the ECO. The RDE can also assign a reviewer list for the Design Work state in order to handle the creation of the reviewer route between Design Work and Review states.

The RDE can promote the ECO to the Design Work state once a reviewer list for the Design Work state is assigned. Upon promotion, a route is created and started using the reviewer list template with a Route Base State set to "Design Work" with the route having a Route Base Purpose set to "Standard" and a Route Completion Action set to "Notify Route Owner." The route is placed between the Design Work and Review states and all tasks must be completed before the ECO is promoted to Review. The owner of the route is the current ECO owner, usually the RDE. When the last task is completed, a notification is sent to the route owner that the route is complete and the ECO can be promoted. If a route already exists, which may happen on demote and subsequent promote, then a new route will not be created but a message is sent to the route owner (RDE) to restart the route.

When the ECO is promoted to the Design Work state, a trigger is run to create new revisions for all affected items that have a Requested Change value set to "Revise." The new revisions are connected to the ECO as affected items. In addition, if the old revision contained approved markups, these markups are copied to the new revisions. This trigger can be inactivated, if desired.

The owner may also demote the ECO, in which case the ownership is reset back to the previous owner.

Design Work

As the ECO enters the Design Work state, the permissions change that prevent any relationships from being made or broken. Once in the Design Work state, the RDE notifies Draftsmen and Design Engineers that they have work to do on this ECO and indicates which parts and drawing prints they are responsible for completing by making them the owner of these objects as required.

These other Design Engineers and Draftsmen perform whatever CAD and Bill of Material work is necessary to ready these objects for review. Once they have performed all the necessary work, they notify the RDE that s/he can review the package.

Assignees can attach additional affected items and are assigned to them by default. They can add BOM markups, propose specification changes, and approve or reject the markups for their respective affected items.

If the package is not acceptable, the RDE notifies the user responsible for making the correction. If the package is acceptable, the RDE signs and promotes the drawing prints and parts to the Review state.

When any affected item connected to the ECO is promoted to the Approved state, all other affected items connected to the ECO are checked to see if they also are in the Approved state. If all affected items are in the Approved state, the ECO is automatically promoted to the Review state. If any single affected item connected to the ECO is a state prior to Approved, the ECO is not promoted to the Review state. A configurable trigger prevents the ECO from manually being promoted to the Review state unless all affected items are have been approved. See the Engineering Central Administrator's Guide for details.

Review

As the ECO enters the Review ECO state, an action fires that automatically routes the ECO to the user who is the Responsible Manufacturing Engineer. The Responsible Manufacturing Engineer reviews the disposition codes and sets the effectivity dates on the new parts accordingly. The Responsible Manufacturing Engineer may also update other part attributes like Lead Time and Estimated Cost. If the package is not acceptable, s/he demotes the ECO back to the Design Work state, which automatically notifies the RDE.

If the package is acceptable, the Responsible Manufacturing Engineer promotes the ECO to the Release state. By default, all affected items are also automatically promoted to the Release state. This is configurable. See the Engineering Central Administrator's Guide for details.

Release

As the ECO enters the Release state, an action fires that automatically changes the owner of the ECO to be a special user in the system "Corporate." This locks down the ECO so no additional changes can be made and removes the ECO from the engineer's desk.

Implemented

The ECO Implemented state closes the loop of the change process. This state provides verification and visibility that a change, as published by Engineering, has in fact been implemented in the factories. It is a "closure" check to ensure that other processes have worked.

Cancelled

In any state prior to Release, the ECO can be cancelled by the ECO owner or a user assigned to any of the following roles in the organization that has change responsibility for the ECO: Design Engineer, Senior Design Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Senior Manufacturing Engineer, ECR Chairman, ECR Coordinator, ECR Evaluator, Part Family Coordinator, Product Obsolescence Manager or Component Engineer.

When an ECO is cancelled, the following actions are performed:


  • All affected items connected to the ECO are disconnected.
  • All routes connected to the ECO are disconnected. The route owner receives notification that the route has been cancelled. All routes are stopped if the ECO is the only content of the route.
  • Route templates connected to ECO are disconnected.
  • All assignees, distribution list and reviewer list members, as well as the ECO originator, are notified that the ECO has been cancelled.
  • The ECO is promoted to the Cancelled state.