Customized impact analyses for technical engineering changes.

During the development of complex technical systems, the impacts of occurring engineering changes (EC) need to be evaluated quickly and accurately. Three current challenges in the analysis of EC impacts are the missing practical validation of approaches, the lack of guidance to support engineers during the development of customized impact analyses, and the lack of consistent and seamless information models as foundation for evaluating the impacts. In a five-step research approach, a new method is developed to address the challenges: Practical problems in the application of impact analyses are identified (1), requirements and use cases of impact analysis application are derived (2), the method and tools are developed (3), the method is applied in case examples (4), and validated by experts (5). The developed method supports engineers in systematically deriving company-specific impact analyses and efficiently evaluating technical changes.