Engineering change orders – ECOs, ECNs, ECRs, whatever you call them—are a key activity during design and volume ramp up stages and continues well into the product’s useful life. In many organizations, ECOs are the heartbeat of the product development process, indicating how well the product organization defines and implements requirements, follows design guidelines, understands and implements manufacturability best practices, and meets stringent quality standards. I have worked with manufacturing companies that use the ongoing number of ECOs as a measure design maturity and an indicator when the design is ready to start transitioning to manufacturing. I disagree with this methodology, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

Fundamentally, ECOs reflect errors in requirements definition, design or manufacturing. They represent waste in the product development process. ECOs are disruptive and resource intensive, and mature organizations should make an effort to minimize the frequency and impact of ECOs.