Change management processes are difficult enough to master, however, when you introduce change notification across the supply chain there is another order of magnitude in the challenge.
Most company’s focus on getting review and approval automated. This is a logical place to start. However, it begs the question “what’s the problem?” Are changes happening without impact analysis regarding other products that have broad implications? Without financial cost assessment? Without proper signatures for compliance reasons? Or is the problem really change "notification"?
There’s a difference between approval and notification. We’ve all seen signature loops that had too many people on them. In those cases, when asked most manages say “I just want to know when products are being changed because it may impact my department.” This is often the ‘I got blindsided by a change and refuse to let that happen again’ response. When you look at the cycle time and who takes the longest to sign-off on changes, these people are usually very slow. They are candidates to move from approval to notification.
Other groups that are often overlooked on formal change notification are Customers, Suppliers, and Distributors or Outsourced Manufacturers / Contract Manufacturers. When changes occur, in many cases there are going to be supply chain implications and often customers need to know.
In a past life, when I was in the semiconductor industry at Analog Devices, we were part of the broader high tech supply chain and used a PCN (or Product Change Notification). It’s similar to an ECN in other industries where you may have an ECR / ECO process that triggers an ECN / PCN.
These notifications were used for any change that impacted critical data sheet specs for Form, Fit, Function, Reliability, etc. A notice was sent out to a standard list organized on a product-by-product basis. This way customers, suppliers and other important members of our supply chain knew when changes occurred.
Surprisingly some PLM systems have a lot of trouble with the notification process. Now, to be fair, it’s easy for the process to get complex fast. Especially when the difference between approval and notification is not clearly differentiated. A lot of companies have spent a lot of time and money struggling with PLM change process implementations because they tried to automate everything all at once and tried to use an inflexible system to boot.
What we’re really talking about for change notification is the ability to have a workflow with Email Alerts that includes a form and file attachments which are subject to Lifecycle states (i.e. Draft, Released, Obsolete, etc) and have good classification capabilities to organize by different parameters such as product, product line / product family, plant, customer, etc.
When you get into it, the lifecycle and classification capabilities are typically what cause ERP systems to be incapable and what can cost a small fortune in custom programming for a conventional PLM/PDM system. This type of process complexity where Aras shines… open, highly flexible, and advanced capabilities for workflows, lifecycles, email alerts, and classification of data, forms and files.
What’s your take? Is supply chain change notification just too expensive or complex to conquer? Or is this an area where open will provide the alternative?