Engineering Changes (ECO)

An Engineering Change (ECO) is how you change a released product safely in ianaiERP. Editing a BOM by hand only changes the BOM — work orders already raised keep the components they were created with, and nobody is told. An Engineering Change names what is changing, shows the records it reaches, goes through approval, and then carries the change into each of those records one by one, so you can see what happened to every one of them.

Overview

• Controlled Change: Replace, add or remove a component, change a quantity, move a part to a new revision, or change how a part is made — across every current BOM that uses it.

• Impact Before Approval: Preview the BOMs, work orders, purchase orders, sales orders and projects a change reaches, and its estimated cost effect on open work orders, before anyone signs off.

• Old Parts Decided Up Front: Decide what happens to old parts already on the shelf or still on order.

• Guided Apply: Once approved, the change creates new BOM revisions and updates open work orders for you, and tells the owners of everything else it touches.

Where to Access

• Manufacturing → Engineering → Changes tab, then Add New.

• Or start from the thing you want to change: on a BOM row (or an item row), open the row menu and choose Start Engineering Change. The change opens already titled Revise … with one Revision line for that part, which you can edit.

Key Attributes

Header

What changes (change lines)

Use Add change for each line, pick the Part, then the Change Type:

A line with no specific BOM applies to the current version of every assembly that uses this part — usually what you want. Replacing a superseded bearing means replacing it in every current BOM. To change one particular BOM revision, name that BOM on the line.

Status (lifecycle)

Each affected record also carries its own state, such as Awaiting approval, Ready to apply, Done, Skipped, Needs decision, or Failed.

Key Functions

1. Preview the impact

Press Preview impact. Every ticked line is checked, and the right-hand panel lists the Affected records grouped by kind, with the estimated cost change across open work orders. Switch between List and Graph to see the same records as a list or as a cascade.

Each line shows what it reaches — Affected · N, No change, or Not checked yet. If you edit a line after previewing, run Preview impact again.

Finished, cancelled and shipped work orders are history and are never listed.

2. Decide what happens to the old parts

When a line replaces, removes or re-revises a part, the Old parts section shows how many are on hand and what they are worth, how many are on order, how many are needed by work orders not yet issued, and how many other BOMs still use the part.

Press Save decisions. If there is stock on hand or on order, a decision is needed before you can submit. You can still change these decisions after submitting, right up until the change is fully applied.

3. Submit for approval

Press Submit. This freezes the list of affected records, so the approver approves that exact list — not whatever the system looks like later.

Your approval rules for engineering changes decide whether a change needs approval, and can take the size of the cost change into account (adding cost and removing cost count the same). If no approval rule applies, the change is approved immediately. Otherwise it waits in Pending Approval, with the full cascade visible to whoever reviews it, until it is approved or rejected, and the submitter is notified of the decision.

While a change is Pending Approval, only its submitter, its approvers and administrators see it in the list.

4. Apply the change

Once the change is Approved, press Apply change. The screen shows each record as it is carried out, with a running count of applied, skipped and failed records:

1. New BOM revisions are created. Each becomes the default and starts on the effective date (or today); the old revision ends the day before.

2. Open work orders are updated — pending ones first, then issued ones.

3. The owners of affected purchase orders, sales orders and projects, and of work orders that need a decision, are notified.

When nothing is left waiting on a decision or failed, the change becomes Applied. Otherwise it is Partially Applied and the button becomes Finish applying. Afterwards, Print revised travelers reprints the work orders that were changed.

5. Finish a partially applied change

Open the change and press Finish applying. Records that need you show a Decide control with the choices that record allows:

Records that Failed show the reason; use Retry on one record or retry all failed records at once. Once nothing is left waiting or failed, the change becomes Applied by itself.

Good to Know

• Only work orders move stock. An Engineering Change never scraps, returns or receives anything itself, and never edits a purchase order or sales order — it tells their owners.

• Work orders raised after approval are included. When you apply, the list is checked again: a work order created from the old revision since approval is updated too. A record that moved on since approval (finished or cancelled) is skipped.

• Lines you added by hand to a work order are kept. Only the lines that came from the BOM follow the new revision.

• Once anything is applied, the change stays. A change with any record already applied is the record of what was done and cannot be cancelled — finish it instead by resolving or skipping the remaining records.

• One apply at a time. If someone else is already applying the same change, you are told so.

• Cost figures follow permissions. The cost impact and the value of old stock are shown only to administrators and to people with costing permission.

• Revisions held by a released drawing are protected. If a part's revision comes from a released drawing, the change cannot overwrite it; that record fails and the rest of the change still applies.

Related Features

• Engineering (Overview)

• Bill of Materials

• Routing

• Work Orders