Read as many similar instruction manuals as you can. Many companies post

12.5 Patent Applications

371 Only a perfect product will never change, and there is no such thing as a perfect product. ■ A change in the customers’ requirements necessitating the redesign of part of the product. ■ A change in material or manufacturing method. This can be caused by a lack of material availability, a change in vendor, or to compensate for a design error. To make a change in an approved configuration, an Engineering Change Notice ECN, also called an Engineering Change Order ECO, is required. An ECN is an alteration to an approved set of final documents and thus needs approval itself. As shown in the example in Fig. 12.3, an ECN must contain at least this information: ■ Identification of what needs to be changed. This should include the part number and name of the component and reference to the drawings that show the component in detail or assembly. ■ Reasons for the change. ■ Description of the change. This includes a drawing of the component before and after the change. Generally, these drawings are only of the detail affected by the change. ■ List of documents and departments affected by the change. The most impor- tant part of making a change is to see that all pertinent groups are notified and all documents updated. ■ Approval of the change. As with the detail and assembly drawings, the changes must be approved by management. ■ Instruction about when to introduce the change—immediately scrapping current inventory, during the next production run, or at some other milestone. 12.5 PATENT APPLICATIONS In Chap. 7, patent literature was used as a source of conceptual ideas. During the evolution of a product, new ideas, ones not already covered by patents, are sometimes generated and a patent application developed. Just about any device or process that is new, useful, and not obvious is patentable. In obtaining a patent, the inventor is essentially entering into a con- tract with the U.S. government, as provided for in the Constitution. The inventor is granted an exclusive right to the idea for 20 years from the filing date. 1 In many cases, the contract is between the inventor’s employer—called the 1 Prior to 1995 patents were good for 17 years from the date of issue.