Change management is a critical part of engineering documentation. Many medium size manufacturers have some level of a formal process. Usually change notice paperwork with attached markups routed manually through the office. Smaller businesses may have a less formal processes where a markup gets handed to the engineer for changes. The problems with manual change processes are many: difficult to track, slow, burdensome (otherwise disorganized if nobody is assigned to manage the process), and a lack of visibility. Enterprise PDM can significantly overcome these issues because process is more automated and shared electronically.

So in this blog series, I will show you how EPDM can electronically manage change notices (part 2), managing redline markups (part 3), and finally put it all together (part 4). These systems will require the use of EPDM serialization, variable mapping and data cards, workflows and notifications, dispatch scripting and more (just too much to cover in a single blog post). Now remember, EPDM is highly configurable. You can make a system that meets you're requirements.

EPDM can manage scanned markups, eDrawings markups, and other markup formats.

So this week is just an introduction to this series of blog posts. Next week I will jump into an example using Enterprise PDM to manage change notices. By the way, I would love to hear what some of you are already doing for change management. And please share your suggestions, questions, or comments.

Click here to read on to Part 2 - Change Management with EPDM (Change Notices)