A method for engineering design change analysis using system modelling and knowledge management techniques

Engineering design change management is very important to the success of engineering product development. It has been recognised that the earlier change issues are addressed, the greater product lifecycle costs can be saved. However, in practice, most engineering changes happen in the manufacturing phase, the later phase of product development. Change issues happening in the design phase, especially between the functional and the structural domains, have been a research focus in recent years, and thus there is significant research work that has been carried out to resolve early engineering change issues from different perspectives. This article presents a novel methodology that has been developed to help designers trace, analyse and evaluate engineering changes occurring in the product design phase. A modelling method is employed to enhance the traceability of potential design changes occurred between the functional and structural domains of design. Based on functional and physical models, a matrix-based method is developed to analyse change propagations between components and help find out design conflicts arising from design changes. A knowledge-based method has been proposed to resolve design conflicts by reusing previous design change knowledge. An industrial example about changes of a wind turbine cooling system has been used to help understand the methodology and prove its usefulness.