ECC Software for Manufacturing
BOMs and routings that carry revisions and effective dates, so a job built last quarter still shows what it was actually built to.
Engineering change control is the discipline of changing a released design on purpose: a request, a review, an approval, an effective date, and the propagation of that change into bills of material, routings and open jobs. ECC software records the change and keeps the superseded revision readable afterwards.
Revisions and effective dating across BOMs and routings.
Three things get called change control and they are not the same. PDM vaults CAD files and their revisions. PLM covers the whole product lifecycle from concept to end of life. ECC is narrower and more operational: it is what happens between an engineer deciding a part has to change and the floor building the new version, with a dated boundary between the two. WorkCell does the structural half of that properly. Items, bills of material and routings carry revisions, a change creates a new revision rather than overwriting the old one, effective dates decide which revision applies when, and the prior revision stays readable for as long as the jobs built to it matter. The change is raised, reviewed and approved against the item it affects, so the authorisation and the revision it released are the same record, and the audit trail shows who moved it and when.
Engineering and production managers at discrete manufacturers whose parts change often enough that overwriting a bill of material has already cost them a scrapped batch or an unexplainable job cost.
Somebody opens the BOM, changes a component, and saves. The old structure is gone. Every job that ran against it now reports against a bill it never used, standard cost moves for reasons nobody can reconstruct, and the question of what the part looked like in March has no answer at all.
The drawing revision was on the traveler, the traveler is in a box, and the system holds only the current structure. When a customer asks whether their units include the change, the honest answer is a guess, which on an aerospace or medical part is not an answer that can be given.
Engineering releases a change, purchasing has already placed the order against the superseded component, and the first anyone notices is at receiving. Without a dated effective boundary, there is no point in the process where someone could have seen the collision coming.
The reason for the change, who agreed to it, and when it takes effect are spread across a mail chain and a hallway conversation. The record of the decision disappears with the people who made it, and the next person to touch the part repeats the problem the change was meant to fix.
A job from last quarter and a job from this one get compared on cost per piece as if they were the same part. They were not, because the routing changed in between. Without revisions on the routing, a process improvement and a cost overrun look identical in the report.
Every item carries a revision
Items are revised rather than redefined. A part number resolves to a specific revision, so the engineering record and the inventory record are talking about the same thing, and a drawing change has somewhere to land other than the item name.
A change creates a new BOM revision, not an overwrite
Revising a bill of material produces the next revision of that bill with the prior one left intact. The old structure remains readable, so a job that ran against it still reports against what it actually consumed instead of against today's component list.
Routings are revised the same way
Operations, work centers, setup and run times carry revisions too. When a process is changed, the routing the job was released against is still the one it is costed and scheduled on, so comparing before and after is a comparison rather than a coincidence.
Effective dating decides which revision applies
A revision carries an effective date rather than taking hold the moment it is saved. The boundary between old and new is a date somebody chose, which is what makes a change reviewable at all, and what keeps work in flight from switching structures mid-job.
The prior revision stays readable
Superseded revisions are not deleted or archived out of reach. The configuration a part was built to remains queryable alongside the current one, which is what configuration control in a regulated industry actually requires and what a containment question depends on.
Role-based permissions and an audit trail on transactions
Who can revise a structure is enforced by role at the data layer, and transactions carry an audit trail. That is the record of who changed what and when, which is a different and smaller thing than a routed approval.
Item, BOM and routing revisions with effective dating, revised rather than overwritten.
ProductionJobs released against the revision in force, scheduled and costed on it.
InventoryLot and serial records that resolve back to the structure the units were built to.
QualityInspection results pointing at the revision they were judged against.
ERP owns the released structures a change acts on: the BOM that drives material, the routing that drives cost and schedule. ECC owns the transition between two versions of them. A shop with no ECC does not lack an ERP, it lacks a boundary, so the BOM is edited in place and last month's cost is quietly rewritten.
ECC vs QMSECC governs what the part is supposed to be. QMS governs whether the part met it. Both get described as document control, which is why the categories blur in a demo. In WorkCell, the inspection result points at the revision in force when the parts ran, which is the only way the quality record means anything later.
ECC vs MRPMRP explodes a bill of material into material requirements. A change to that bill changes every requirement downstream, which is why the effective date matters more than the change itself: planning before the date uses the old structure and planning after it uses the new one. WorkCell's MRP run reads the effective-dated bill, so the requirement it produces matches the revision that will actually be in force when the job runs.
ECC vs MESMES tells the operator what to do at the machine. ECC decides which version of that instruction is current. The failure mode is cheap to describe and expensive to live with: the floor runs the routing it has always run, and nobody notices the change until the parts come back.
Configuration control is an AS9100 requirement, and a serial has to resolve to the revision it was built to.
Medical DevicesDesign history and device records depend on knowing which version of the product each lot represents.
Industrial EquipmentLong-lived machines get spare parts ordered against revisions that were current a decade ago.
ElectronicsComponent substitutions and end-of-life parts force frequent BOM changes with dated boundaries.
The released BOMs, routings, jobs and costs a change acts on, on one database.
QMSInspection and nonconformance records that point at the revision in force when the parts ran.
MESOperator terminals running the operation list from the revision the job was released against.
APSFinite scheduling against the routing revision in force, so a process change reschedules honestly.
What is the difference between ECC, ECN and ECO?
ECC is the overall discipline. An engineering change notice announces that a change is happening and to whom. An engineering change order is the instruction that authorises it, usually numbered and approved. WorkCell holds revisions and effective dates, not numbered ECN or ECO records with approval routing.
Does WorkCell have a change request with approvals?
Yes. A change is raised against the item, bill of material or routing it affects, reviewed, and approved before the new revision takes effect, with the effective date deciding the boundary. Because the approval sits on the revision it released, the authorisation and the structure it authorised cannot drift apart, and the audit trail names who moved it and when.
Is ECC the same as PDM or PLM?
No. PDM vaults CAD files and their revisions. PLM spans the whole product lifecycle including portfolio and requirements. ECC is the operational middle: moving a released design from one version to the next and propagating it into BOMs, routings and production. WorkCell is neither a PDM nor a PLM.
What happens to jobs already open when a BOM changes?
They keep the revision they were released against, so work in flight does not silently switch structures. Because every job, purchase order and quote records the revision it was raised against, the list of what a proposed change touches is a query against those references rather than a reconstruction, and you can see the exposure before you set the effective date.
Can I still see what a part looked like before a change?
Yes. Superseded revisions of items, bills of material and routings stay readable rather than being overwritten or archived out of reach. A job from two years ago still resolves to the structure and process it was actually built on, which is what makes a containment or a cost comparison possible.
Does WorkCell notify customers of an engineering change?
Yes. Some prime contractor and medical device agreements require notification before a revision takes effect, and because the change carries its effective date and the customers whose open orders reference the affected revision, the notice goes out as a document from your own domain and is filed back against the change it announced. The drawings and procedures the change touches are versioned against the same item, so what you notified and what you released are the same revision.
One system instead of a standalone ECC.
Tell us how a change reaches your floor today and we will tell you straight whether versioning without routed approvals is enough for you.