The aviation, space, and defence industries rely on the development and manufacture of complex products comprised of multiple systems, subsystems, and components each designed by individual designers (design activities) at various levels within the supply chain. Each design activity controls various aspects of the configuration and specifications related to the product. When a change to design information is requested or required, the change has to be evaluated against the impacts to the higher-level system.
Proposed changes to design information that the design activity identifies to be minor and have no effect on their product requirements or specifications have the potential to be concurrently implemented and approved, where authorized to do so. Changes that affect customer mandated requirements or specifications shall be approved prior to implementation. In many cases, the design activity is not the design approver or authority; ultimate approval may be several layers above the design activity. The typical flow of design requirements to the supplier, from the design authority, and the change notification flow is presented in Figure 1.