Product configuration management FAQs

• What is PLM quality management?

  Quality management is a key PLM process that ensures quality is designed into every product and process across the enterprise, including external partners. Quality management provides automated failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), enables closed-loop corrective and preventive actions (CAPAs), and accurate root cause analysis (RCA) to accelerate identification, containment, and analysis of issues and tracking of affected items. Quality management is required to achieve compliance with regulatory requirements and quality standards in most industries. Configuration management goes hand in hand with quality management when it comes to improving the quality of complex products. By effectively managing and collaborating around a product’s parts and configurations with accurate data, there is less risk for errors, scrap, and rework.

• What are the challenges of managing configurations?

  There are multiple challenges to managing configurations:
  Lack of Alignment—Requiring manual, paper sign-offs on changes means inefficient execution of changes and no holistic product design.
  Outdated Product Designs—The lack of ability to make coordinated changes can leave stakeholders unable to access current data.
  Lack of Reuse—Duplicate work and slows down time to market.
  Lack of Governance—Changes to a product’s configurations throughout its lifecycle aren't traceable.

• What is product variant management?

  Product variant management is a critical process that enables teams to manage complex variants and configurations at scale. Product diversity brings challenges to operational efficiency, complicating processes, introducing the potential for errors and adding development and quality-related costs. Rather than reconfiguring a new product every time an order is placed, variant management allows engineering to reuse predefined configurations (or variants) and to apply change management, quality workflows, and other processes to all like variants simultaneously.

• What is the knowledge-based configuration process?

  So-called knowledge-based configuration seeks to manage customization requirements more quickly and accurately for a particular customer. This is achieved by integrating learnings, experience, and knowledge from the product's previous use phases into the continuing configuration process, improving the accuracy and timeliness of BOM generation. Knowledge-based configuration is also a rich and well-proven application area for artificial intelligence, whereby a body of information can be searched for valid existing configurations that meet a given set of needs, using AI techniques.

• How does effective product configuration management impact business?

  When high-quality products are delivered faster, at lower cost, the customer's own business results are enhanced. CTO capabilities amplify these strengths. Effective product configuration management eliminates friction throughout the product lifecycle, ultimately strengthening the enterprise's reputation, its bottom line, and its brand.