Optimizing Configuration Management with Nora IPLM
Table of Contents
- The Crucial Role of Configuration Management (CM) in Modern Manufacturing
- Scope of Configuration Management
- Impact of Production Style on CM Practices
- The Role of PLM in Managing CM Data
- Maintaining Configuration Baselines in CM
- The Role of Change Management in CM
- Nora IPLM’s Role in Configuration Management
The Crucial Role of Configuration Management (CM) in Modern Manufacturing
Configuration Management (CM) is one of the key topics in manufacturing industries, especially in Aerospace, Defense, and Automotive. For a company that owns all the main processes from idea to production, Configuration Management plays a key role in harnessing and maintaining overall integrity and traceability of all data and processes throughout the whole lifecycle. By definition, an IPLM/PLM platform is the perfect environment to manage all Configuration Management-related information.
Scope of Configuration Management
In the scope of CM, we can include anything related to the technical, functional, and physical information of products, components, and systems. Most of this data is linked to each other either in hierarchical structures or in cross-links. Examples of hierarchically linked structures are BOMs (Bill of Materials), requirement structures, and function structures. Examples of cross-links are item-document, item-requirement, and item-alternate item links.
The main aim of CM is to ensure integrity, consistency, traceability, and compliance with customer or internal requirements. This function becomes more critical for highly regulated and safety-critical environments.
Impact of Production Style on CM Practices
CM practices and needs are also affected by the production style of the industry. For example, CM practices change significantly between serial production (like consumer goods, cars, notebooks, etc.) and custom production (like ships, satellites, tanks, etc.). CM plays a key role in all types of production, but the needs, roles, and practices differ.
Key objectives of CM include product integrity, operational efficiency, compliance, risk mitigation, and traceability. Additional functions supporting CM objectives include collaboration, lifecycle support, impact analysis, change management, configuration control (CCB), and the management of key business objectives like cost, weight, or carbon footprint.
The Role of PLM in Managing CM Data
To maintain data structures that represent one-to-one copies of real-world products in use and manage revisioning and change management of these complex data in a cross-discipline environment is nearly impossible without a sophisticated single PLM environment. Some may argue that CM can be maintained in ERP, but this is not true because most CM-related data and processes like requirements, items, EBOMs (Engineering Bill of Materials), ECM (Engineering Change Management), etc., need to be managed even before ERP systems are aware of a new product to be manufactured.
Maintaining Configuration Baselines in CM
Maintaining configuration baselines is key in a modern CM environment. Although methods of revisioning combined with lifecycle management can be presented as a solution, without the capability of taking as many baselines as needed and using them for reporting and comparison, reaching a high level of CM is not possible. In an ever-evolving design and engineering environment, revisioning all necessary levels of a complex EBOM with every change is nearly impossible. Baseline capability offers a very flexible way of freezing a structure with all its information without requiring new revisions or approval and release procedures.
The Role of Change Management in CM
Change Management is also an important part of CM. In a complex multi-discipline product development environment, making the right decisions, managing the chain of changes, and implementing changes without friction to reach the expected outcome is challenging. Any mistake can cost time, money, and resources, and in some cases, lead to missing critical milestones or project deadlines.
For a proper Change Management environment, key functions like Change Request, Impact Analysis, Risk Analysis, Change Order, and Change Task, supported by Requirements, Documents, Items, BOMs, and all other data sets, need to be in place. Committees like CCB (Change Control Board) should easily evaluate, approve, or reject proposed changes in real-time. At the end, all Change Management-related activities should be well-documented, communicated, and systematically implemented.
Nora IPLM’s Role in Configuration Management
Nora IPLM offers a single platform for managing all CM-related activities, maintaining and linking all data and processes managed by all parties from anywhere and on any device. Many new achievements will also be reached by adding AI capabilities on top of conventional PLM capabilities. Examples include reporting predictive impact and risk analysis of a possible change on an item or system even before starting a change process, or reporting the pattern of unsuccessful change processes and analyzing their root causes.
Start using Nora IPLM platform today and streamline your Configuration Management processes for enhanced efficiency and traceability.