Case studies from Jaguar Land Rover and ABB offer insights into CLM.
The Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) summit combines two half-days of customer and partner testimonies followed by another half-day of technical use case discussions and demonstrations orchestrated by Configit. These presentations cover product complexity and market dynamics.
When developing complex products, data consistency drives collaboration and effective decision-making. During his presentation, Henrik Hulgaard, VP of Product Management and co-founder of Configit, highlighted the increasing imperative for a “smooth and consistent view of the data across the enterprise” to navigate changing market dynamics. This was reinforced when Configit referenced a recent report from Gartner entitled Top Strategic Technology Trends in Asset Intensive Manufacturing for 2023. It claimed that an increase in standardization and reuse is inevitable.
“By 2026, configuration lifecycle management will transform 40 percent of manufacturers, reducing the amount of customer-specific engineering required to deliver products,” states the Gartner report.
To help ensure engineers are ready for that inevitability, this post highlights six takeaways from the Configuration Lifecycle Management Summit by summarizing the conference and looking at two industrial case studies: one from Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and another from ABB.
The Importance of CLM
Hulgaard explained how effective product configuration can help manufacturers be more sustainable, manage supply chains and handle regulatory requirement variability. Among other business benefits, configuration solutions contribute to reducing waste from manufacturing errors and by focusing on “green product configurations” to ensure sustainable operations.
Furthermore, modern product configuration requires a dynamic rules engine to continuously track changes and align with regulatory requirements, supply chain deliverables and market conditions. This includes adding or removing options available in specific markets, reacting to supply chain shortages or assessing implications from mandatory compliance changes.
Configuration rules help engineers simulate and assess the impact of changes as well as implement and track change applicability across product families and markets. Hulgaard highlighted that a centralized configuration engine goes beyond product, manufacturing and sales. It is also important to join the dots across PLM, ERP and CRM to effectively drive enterprise alignment and data consistency.
Case Study 1: Jaguar Land Rover
Joy Batchelor, technical specialist for Product Configuration at JLR, highlighted the importance of “a single source of configuration truth across the enterprise […] at any point of the configuration lifecycle” when developing highly complex connected products. JLR used to apply configuration to processes with multiple configurators across design, build, sell and maintain phases. In 2020, the automotive OEM transitioned to a centralized configurator and single feature language across carlines and product lifecycle.
Supporting the build of a new configuration engine in partnership with Configit has been a 12-year journey. Over that period, JLR implemented Configit’s ACE configuration engine. The transition efforts included significant data cleansing and product data alignment in the legacy solution to address inconsistencies, and building automation routines on top of cleaner configuration logic, while concurrently transitioning the relevant data to ACE.
Overall, the deployment of ACE resulted in a 95 percent reduction in modelling time, removing product configuration from the critical path of cycle plans, driving more reuse, agile change implementations and reduced production mistakes. In addition, the centralized configuration engine was essential in managing automotive chip and semiconductor shortages—proactively responding to global supply chain challenges that were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Furthermore, Batchelor elaborated on the company vision to move to modular modelling with standardized features and families across carlines. He highlighted that “70 percent of families are expected to be cross-carline,” further bolstering data reuse, agility and modularity. Modularization starts with feature models and product architectures, including the configuration of requirements to track changes and validation across modular BOM.
Per the Configit case study, JLR achieved the following business benefits:
- Accurate and trusted configuration information throughout.
- Efficient, flexible, user-friendly and scalable modeling environments.
- Support for concurrent modeling, comprehensive testing capability and controlled release processes.
- Replacement of legacy systems while continuing support of numerous downstream systems.
- Platforms for future business initiatives, such as global websites, bill of material validation, wire harness optimization and more.
Case Study 2: ABB Electrification
Rajat Bhattacharya, digital commerce leader of Electrification at ABB, described the CLM situation at ABB’s Electrification business. He explained how global complexity from diverse supply chains, distributed digital landscapes and disparate ecommerce channels complicate the lifecycle of products. He then expressed the need for engineering, manufacturing and sales configurators across a single PLM solution but multiple ERP platforms.
ABB has had a nine-year journey implementing and maintaining multiple product and solution configurators, providing a holistic perspective across global material usage and local pricing rules. Bhattacharya highlighted that ABB established a global central configuration platform feeding front-end configurators for local sales units in multiple countries.
Per the Configit case study, ABB Electrification achieved the following business benefits:
- Faster capability to build product models and configuration rules.
- Decreased time to create a quotation or an order, from days to real time.
- Smoother internal supply chain process.
- 76 percent return on investment.
6 Key Takeaways From the CLM Summit
There is a lot to learn from events like the CLM Summit as they distribute practical use cases and stories of applying product configuration best practices. In a nutshell, the takeaways from the conference are that configuration lifecycle management is about:
- Centralizing product, manufacturing, sales order and pricing configuration rules in a common engine.
- Managing complexity and change traceability across BOM modularity.
- Facilitating compliance alignment through requirement configuration.
- Driving sustainability and compliance, contributing to reduced scopes 1 and 3 emissions.
- Simplifying integration and driving supply chain resilience.
- Driving operational efficiency, reducing waste and lowering production costs.
