Much has been recently written about the use of Configuration Management (CM) as products, equipment, systems, and infrastructures (both physical and digital) become more complex to design and maintain with frequent configuration changes over longer lifecycles of consumer use or asset deployment. As a result, the role of configuration management continues to rapidly expand and evolve, creating new challenges, opportunities and decisions for CM professionals, industry practitioners and solution providers.

In this month’s CMsights we speak with Lisa Fenwick, Vice President of Product Development for CMstat, to better understand what exactly is Change Implementation Planning and Verification. It’s a timely topic because many product and project managers are justifiably confused by the overlapping terms change control, change management, change implementation…

By far the most common error CMstat has observed industrial users of CM software make is that of senior-level managers mistakenly believing their organization was ready to proceed implementing a configuration management strategy before everyone was adequately educated, prepared and trained to do so…

Our latest CMsights post begins a series on the most common lessons that CMstat has seen our software customers and consulting clients learn over the years from implementing configuration management (CM). These include lessons learned – both easy and hard - that are applicable to a small project, complete product line, major program…

In our first CMviews interview, CMstat’s Vice President of Development Lisa Fenwick speaks with Larry Gurule, President of CMPIC, about the role of Configuration Management in taming then leveraging the Digital Thread. In this broadcast our pair of subject matter experts begin to explore: What is the Digital Thread and…

Questions regarding the differences between Configuration Management (CM) and Change Management (also CM) arise so often that we decided to address it in a CMsights post. It is not uncommon that a new A&D program manager or engineering lead may think that configuration management and change management are synonyms. If…

Your new aircraft control system has gone through all the reviews and audits (e.g. SRR, PDR, CDR, FCA and PCA as referenced in Part 1 of this CMsights article) and you are ready to deliver your first unit/lot number to your customer. You have diligently assigned Hard Ware Configuration Items…

In this series of CMsights posts from CMstat on configuration management best practices we will describe what are hardware configuration items (“CI” or “HWCI”) and where they are used. Next, we will examine how are CIs best employed by A&D contractors in configuration management software used at the program, project…

Part 3 of 3 - In the first article in this series we summarized the aerospace business and technology trends which have added so much complexity into their mix of products, processes, and programs that risks paralyzing even the best defense contractors and their supply chain. In the last CMsights…

Part 2 of 3 - The importance of As-Configured Management functionality for downstream users In this latest CMsights article from CMstat on hardware configuration management software we examine one of the most important aerospace configuration management functions that downstream users of product configuration data seek in their CM tools and…

(Part 1 of 3) In this first article of a multi-part series on hardware configuration management software tools for the aerospace and defense industry we begin by summarizing the trends which have added so much complexity that can paralyze even the best defense contractors and their…

The Top Questions Executives Should Ask Their Organization In our last CMsights post we presented the case that Product Configuration Governance (PCG) deserves more attention from the executive office suite beyond what it receives from configuration management (CM) practitioners. But how does a product line executive know when issues of…

The Case for Configuration Governance: Across the A&D industry increasing attention is being demanded from executives by a growing list of governance concerns. This list include matters of financial governance, legal governance, regulatory compliance governance, ITAR and controlled goods governance, human resource governance, and now even social responsibility governance. All…

The surest way for A&D managers to become interested in CM is when production halts because of a missed change order, a supplier ships to an old rev level, logistics can’t source replacement parts, field service starts submitting warranty claims, and a customer calls to report a product performance anomaly. Or worse yet, when executives first hear about a product failure in social media or on the news because it bore catastrophic consequences.

In this month’s CMsights post we invited Lisa Fenwick, Vice President of CMstat, to share how configuration management training and configuration management certification became so important to her engineering career. Lisa writes... I was very lucky when I graduated college with my BSME. My first job was performing project management…

In last month’s CMsights post we reflected on why the combination of configuration management (CM) and metrics is so problematic for CM professionals to engage and then educate their executives about as part of CM planning. We remarked this is not surprising because many managers, unfortunately, give little thought about CM…

Managers don't want an education in Configuration Management so talk to them about the business value of Configuration Management Metrics

In our most recent series of CMsights Posts we addressed the question of why not use PDM software for all Configuration Management requirements, including those applications downstream of NPD engineering in aftermarket service, repair, maintenance, and overhaul. A question CMstat received afterwards was about the differences between design-centric PDM software…