Indicating the criticality of changes during the product life cycle

As technical changes account for a significant part of the efforts like cost and time in product development and result from failures, which mainly appear after the Start of Production (SOP), change management need to consider further life cycle phases to indicate the criticality of changes. With Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) concentrating on their core competences, suppliers are increasingly involved in the change process, which is challenging the established models for the evaluation of changes. This paper presents a model for indicating the criticality of changes, which is based on a product life cycle model and a change process including the change transmission by causeeffect relations. On that basis, a literature-based discussion of indicators leads to the deduction of two alternative indicators. The combination of those indicators finally enables the indication of the criticality of a change during the product life cycle through the affected life cycle phases and the organisational interfaces, which are the basis of the developed indication model.