Change and Revision Management at DENSO Automotive Deutschland GmbH

Background

DENSO is global supplier of automotive technology systems and components. Many car manufacturers around the world install DENSO products, for example climate control systems.

Whenever a part of such a product is scheduled to be altered, all manufacturers using this part need to be informed of the intended change and queried for their approval. This process can also include issuing samples of the intended new layout to customers. After general approval, the new part can be taken into production. Every step and decision of this change process has to be meticulously documented.

Client requirements

DENSO wanted to have a system that supported all aspects of change cycle. As DENSO is a globally operating company, the employees concerned with change management of automotive parts are spread over several locations. Therefore the system needed to be based on the globally accessible intranet solution rather than a locally installed database application.

A selection of specific requirements:

• The status of customer feedback for intended changes needs to be easily accessible and presented concisely.
• Depending on the nature of the intended change, the system should enable DENSO to determine when a customer needs to be informed.
• The system needs to be equipped with reporting facilities for internal control as well as documentation for the customer.
• In case of problems, it must be possible to determine exactly when a new part was first introduced into production.
• Feasibility checks should enable staff to detect inconsistencies immediately.
• The roles of different staff members should be reflected in a permission structure.

Solution

The solution is based on a CMS powered by Zope and Plone. The actual data storage is handled in a MySQL database. A customer tailored interface was developed to meet the demands for fine grained input as well as broad overview.

The system holds data of all parts in their various states and their relation to the affected customers. For every change introduced, a separate item is created that holds all details and can also include Word and PDF documents. Individual changes can be grouped to larger-scale change incidents that reflect all changes for a given date.

Ajax based search facilities and data selectors support DENSO staff in quickly assembling and checking all necessary data for a change process. Various reporting facilities allow creating reports of intended and effective changes. Different templates enable DENSO to meet their customers' layout requirements.

Customer benefits

By using a Zope/Plone based system with its object database in combination with a relational database, the benefits of both worlds can be combined. The system is accessible and editable by browser on one hand, while on the other hand complex queries can be efficiently and rapidly computed.

The overall time for administrating changes could be significantly reduced with the introduction of the new system. Data consistency has greatly improved, because feasibility checks inform data handling staff immediately of potential conflicts.