Tracing change from products to enterprises, and the configuration of everything.
Innovation requires a proactive and structured approach to managing the multiple configurations and variants within a product portfolio. Configuration management (CM) is about ensuring that each product variant is optimized to meet specific customer needs, regulatory requirements and market trends. This includes component identification and continuous change control. It acknowledges that designing different variants involves continuous decision-making regarding features, assemblies, components, supply chain, part alternates and more.
Effective CM enables nothing less than product quality. With it, organizations adapt swiftly to market changes, optimize resource utilization and maintain a cohesive and well-defined product lineup that resonates with long-term portfolio objectives.
Simply put, CM deals with three perspectives:
- Data releasing
- Managing variability and modularity
- Change traceability
Furthermore, CM is about process and data integration, driving change traceability across the lifecycle of product assets. This includes product requirements, quality conformity, bills of materials (BOMs), compliance and safety, technical documentation alignment, failure mode and effects analyses (FMEAs), corrective actions, production lines, costs and sustainability.
But isn’t this all also true when discussing configuration lifecycle management (CLM)? This post elaborates on the evolution of CM towards CM2 and CLM, and what is means to drive successful innovation and change traceability.
CM is for products, CM2 spans the enterprise
So, what do regulatory bodies and the industry say about the different terms surrounding configuration management?
Per ISO 10007:2017, Quality management — Guidelines for configuration management, CM is defined as “a management activity that applies technical and administrative direction over the life cycle of a product and service, its configuration identification and status and related product and service configuration information.”
Furthermore, the standard calls for the use of CM practices to “assist organizations applying configuration management to improve their performance […] over the lifecycle of a product and service, its configuration identification and status, and related product and service configuration information.”
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) claimed in its blog, Configuration Management Through ISO 10007:2017, that “Configuration management originated within the U.S. Department of Defense within the 1950s, but has since found applicability in a wide range of industries. One prominent application of the process is software configuration management, in which the advantages of the system are utilized for keeping software systems functional. Software configuration management is covered specifically in IEEE 828-2012 – IEEE Standard for Configuration Management in Systems and Software Engineering.”
The enterprise software company CMstat highlights in its solutions page for configuration management software that “the practice of configuration management is applicable to physical products, complete systems, processes and services, as well as to their software, data and documentation. This includes configuration management of hardware, software and firmware used in parts, products, product portfolios, equipment, systems, IT devices and other assets.”
Meanwhile, the cross-industry business intelligence and technical expertise experts IpX refers to CM2 on its front page as a scope extension of CM. It drives traceability beyond products to the enterprise. It says, “CM2 provides a comprehensive methodology for managing the configuration of a product, system and/or service throughout its life. It takes the core business process of CM and its traditionally limited focus to expand its criticality throughout the full enterprise.”
Per SAE International’s EIA649C standard on CM, the practice commonly consists of five functions:
- Configuration planning and management
- Configuration identification
- Configuration change management
- Configuration status accounting
- Configuration verification and audit
In this context, SAE also highlights that “the CM principles defined in this standard apply equally to internally focused enterprise information, processes and supporting systems (i.e., [the] enterprise CM … policy … supporting the internal goals needed to achieve an efficient, effective and lean enterprise), as well as to the working relationships supported by the enterprise (i.e., [the] acquirer [or] supplier of CM [and their] contracted relationship to support external trusted interaction with suppliers).”
From CM2 to CLM: Expanding into PLM, ERP and CRM
The Configuration Management Process Improvement Center (CMPIC) notes in the article “What is Configuration Management?” that it is defined as “knowing what we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what we will be doing in the future, as well as understanding the reasoning and authority behind every action / change that got us there.” It is based on the premise that “nothing should be changed without proper review and authorization.”
In other words, CM practices are commonly associated with maintaining control and preventing chaos within operations with the relevant controls and associated processes.
This clearly means that CM is closely intertwined with the ways organizations make well-informed decisions and execute necessary actions throughout the product lifecycle. This aligns seamlessly with the wider principles of product lifecycle management (PLM). It emphasizes the importance of structured control mechanisms to ensure consistency, traceability and efficiency in decision-making and actions at every stage of a product’s lifecycle.
This brings us finally to CLM. Through its connections to PLM, ERP and CRM it is about managing how product configurations evolve over time. It tracks how components mature through new or updated requirements, options, business rules, pricing, supplier deliverables and more.CLM connects the dots across enterprise configurations. In its Tech Talk, Establishing the Unique “Digital Configuration Thread” with CLM and Configit Ace, Configit referrers to CLM as the “digital configuration thread.”
Configuration lifecycle management sits at the intersection of CM, PLM, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). It enables complex product modularity, centrally governing component alternatives and options across the portfolio. But it also facilitates cross-functional communication within and beyond the enterprise including engineering, manufacturing, sales, planning and services functions.
