How Can You Maintain Visibility into Engineering Changes After a Product Enters Mass Production?

A hardware product company approached RNDSquare to address challenges in managing engineering changes after its product had entered mass production. As the product evolved, the engineering team continued making changes to components, PCB revisions, firmware, and product configurations to improve performance, address field issues, and accommodate component availability.

However, maintaining visibility into these changes across engineering, procurement, manufacturing, and quality teams became increasingly difficult.

Engineering updates were often documented in separate files, spreadsheets, and internal communication channels. Manufacturing teams sometimes continued working with earlier revisions, while procurement relied on outdated BOM information. This created uncertainty about which design revision, components, and firmware version were used in each production batch.

The company needed a structured approach to track engineering changes and ensure that every team had access to the correct product information.

Common challenges included:

• Revision tracking: Identifying which hardware revision was approved and used for each production batch.
• BOM inconsistencies: Ensuring component changes were reflected in the latest BOM and communicated to procurement.
• Change visibility: Understanding how an engineering change affected manufacturing, testing, and product configurations.
• Firmware compatibility: Maintaining visibility into firmware versions associated with different hardware revisions.
• Production traceability: Identifying which manufactured units were affected by a particular engineering change.
• Documentation gaps: Keeping engineering documents, change records, and manufacturing information aligned.

The company needed a more reliable way to manage engineering changes throughout the product lifecycle, even after production had scaled.

After understanding the company's requirements, RNDSquare proposed a structured approach to engineering change management and product traceability. The focus was on connecting engineering revisions, BOM information, manufacturing records, and firmware configurations to maintain visibility across the product lifecycle.

Our team focused on the following activities:

• Engineering Change Tracking: Established a structured approach to recording hardware design changes, revision updates, and engineering decisions, including the reasons behind each change.
• BOM Revision Management: Organized BOM information to ensure component additions, replacements, and removals were reflected in the appropriate product revision.
• Change Impact Analysis: Identified how engineering changes could affect procurement, manufacturing processes, testing requirements, and existing product configurations.
• Hardware-Firmware Traceability: Connected hardware revisions with their corresponding firmware versions and configurations to reduce compatibility issues.
• Production Batch Tracking: Recommended maintaining records of hardware revisions, component details, and manufacturing information against individual production batches and device serial numbers.
• Documentation and Approval Control: Established a consistent approach to maintaining approved design files, revision histories, and change records so teams could access the correct information.

By connecting these records, the approach aimed to give engineering and manufacturing teams a clearer understanding of what changed, when it changed, and which products were affected.