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Information and communication technologies (ICT) have altered the balance of cost between activities within a firm and activities between firms. Easier co-operation allows companies to focus on their core strengths, while forming relations with other firms to supply the other needed skills to bring a product to market. Design, in one firm or in a consortium, is iterative and does require change. The ability of companies to better manage engineering changes (ECs) during product development can decrease cost, shorten development time, and produce higher quality products. This paper concerns engineering change management (ECM) when product development involves more than one company. A review of ECM related papers finds a lack of those that address multi-company design efforts. This approach is based upon recent work in collaborative engineering, which uses elementary engineering decisions …