Research of Automotive Change Management and Supportive Risk Management

Abstract

“Change Management” in automotive electronic control units (ECU) development project is one of the most important, but undervalued and understood tools to guarantee the success of a project. An ECU embedded within a car electronic environment is constantly under attack of a continuous flow of modifications of specifications throughout the development life cycle until start-of-production (SoP). Root causes for those modifications are, for instance, simply software or hardware implementation errors, improvement for robust design or requirement changes to satisfy the forthcoming demands of the market to ensure the later commercial success. Clearly, it is unavoidable that from the very beginning until the very end of the project “requirement changes” will “expose” the agreed objectives defined by contract specifications, which are product features, budget, schedule, and quality. The following investigation will assume that initially a feasibility study was undertaken to judge the general possibility to achieve the project objectives. Thus the key discussions will focus upon requirement changes or in the latter called RfC’s (Request for Change) and their possible project risk. Building a thorough understanding of prospective threats is of paramount importance in order to establish the adequate project management process landscape to handle RfC’s. In short, how to manage “risks” of RfC’s. Moreover, this paper analyzes and identifies the constraints along the applied automotive Change-Management (CM) processes, reviewing the project life cycle of automotive projects. The research will not limit, bus focus on the investigation of changes during the early phase of the project: the concept-validation and debugging phase (see Fig. 1). In addition, clearly outlines frameworks of supportive processes to improve automotive CM practices with respect to risk management. The examined risk management process will visualize the in- and out-flow status of RfC’s. In addition, deliver instruments to judge the carried risks of RfC have to meet agreed project objectives, consequently minimizing the risk.