A change control board (CCB) is comprised of internal teams of subject matter experts (e.g., engineering, quality, purchasing, manufacturing) and often includes supply chain partners. CCB members review engineering change requests (ECRs) and engineering change orders (ECOs) to determine if the proposed product designs should be approved, released, and ultimately manufactured.
An engineering change control system is a set of processes that provides changes to existing products or manufacturing processes (or release of new products) to be identified, defined, submitted for approval, and implemented.
An engineering change control process ensures that all necessary changes to products, or the processes used to create products, are documented and revision controlled to eliminate product design and manufacturing errors, quality issues, and/or product safety and compliance issues.
An engineering change control board (CCB) assesses the proposed product changes prior to implementation and makes sure that there are no negative impacts. The change control board examines scope, timing, cost, risk, and other factors associated with the proposed change.
It varies by type of company. Typically there are Change Managers or Change Analysts that reside in Engineering or Quality Assurance functions. These types of roles are responsible for managing the change control and review process between internal and external teams (supply chain partners) that need to approve changes.
Read our guides to effective change and revision control, master change management with our best practices articles and learn how to implement an effective change management system.