Engineering Documentation Control / Configuration Management Standards Manual

Chapter 37Actual Effectivity Tracking

Purpose

• To outline the method and responsibilities for tracking changes to their actual effectivity.

Applicability

• All changes to be processed by this CM function.

Policy/Practice

• Change processing is not complete when a change is released to manufacture — we must know the actual effectivity (traceability):
  1. For non-interchangeable changes the exact units containing the change (and thus those that don’t) must be known.
  2. For interchangeable changes the actual effective date at a specified point in production is adequate — tracing to exact units is not necessary in most commercial environments. (Not necessarily true in some regulated environments – see FDA, DOD, NASA, etc., requirements.)
• Examples of methods for identifying the exact unit (non-interchangeable) are (pick one):
  3. Tracking to Serial Number is a very common method – “shop traveler” to Serial Number. When a change is incorporated, its number is recorded on the shop traveler. After the SN is assigned, the SNs with the change are recorded. Unit recycling may cause effectivity to be very mixed – Example: change #1326 effective at SNs 128, 130, 133, 136, 138 and up.
  4. “Make to Order” companies would typically make whole orders contain the change. If a change is to affect only part of an order, often a suffix digit is added to the order. If the ERP has an “Order Related BOM” capability, changes in the middle of an order could cause two Order Related BOMs to be created.
  5. High end (high ...