Determining the Drivers for Long Lead Times of Engineering Change Orders: A Data Mining Approach

In the automotive industry engineering change orders (ECOs) are responsible for a high proportion of development costs. An inefficient handling of them prolongs the time to market, which is widely regarded to be a key competitive factor and a cost driver. This paper points out which drivers are causing high process times by applying knowledge discovery and data mining methods using data of a European car manufacturer and comparing the outcome with theoretical drivers derived from literature. In addition the impact of product complexity and dependencies between different products is explored.