Definition of configuration management (CM):

CM is a discipline that uses technical and administrative regulations and surveillance processes in the following cases:

• the identification and documentation of functional and physical criteria of one item under configuration control 
• the control of these criteria
• tracking and highlighting change status and product data
• controllingf the compliance to specifications and to other contractual requirements

Configuration in terms of ISO 10007 §3.1 means the functional and physical description of a product as defined in the technical documentation. This is why every kind of material produced within the framework of a project is called a product. A project is the summary of single tasks in a predefined order, corelation and a time frame. Every single task has a known result. A project covers simple studies whose results are pure documentation as well as the realization of complex systems such as aeroplanes, power plants or vehicles.

Thus you have to look at configuration management (CM) as supervision and control of the functional as well as of the physical configuration of a product during its entire life cycle. CM is a management discipline that establishes technical and administrative directions during the development, production and support of the life cycle of all items under configuration control.

Advantages:

• adheres to international standards, such as e.g. ISO, DoD, MIL or “best practices” like CMII
• all necessary information for the entire company are available at any time
• documentation of all changes to, installations to and removals from a product during its entire life cycle
• traceability in the case of product liability
• editing of comprehensive data

Studies of the industry show that a consistant application of configuration management rules and processes cuts the time from the introduction of a change application to its execution in half. This leads to a cost reduction of 32%.

More changes can be controlled and incorporated which will lead to an improvement of the entire product. This improvement can be achieved with the same number of employees.

usb has already applied its know-how and experience to numerous projects and so managed to support their customers advantageously. This does not only apply to the area of configuration management but also to requirement management and traceability.

Aims:

• constant control over a specific construction level of a product
• improvement of quality
• active surveillance of changes instead of being committed to changes
• cost-efficient project management
• harmonization of project and organisation specific processes
• correct definition of items that are affected by changes (i.e. design documents, contracts, parts and tools)
• extensive and complete change history
• complete design requirements per final product
• traceability between changes in the contract which affect different levels
• avoidance of data redundancy in the case of distributed processing
• constant recording of the product specific design/build status, as well as the evidence of variations

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