Configuration Management for Aviation Aerospace & Defense

Inside Industries : Configuration Management Industry Users & Applications l Aviation Aerospace & Defense l Energy & Renewables l Heavy Machinery & Industrial Equipment l High-Tech & Electronics l Industrial Automation and Robotics l Manufacturing and Supply Chain l Marine and Naval l Transportation & Mobility

Configuration Management in Aerospace and Defense

The first industrial applications for hardware configuration management trace their origins to the early days of aviation engineering. Most of the industry standards, training programs, and best practices developed for configuration management arose from performing aircraft configuration management in the product development cycle, and then matured as the aerospace and defense industry widely adopted CM.

However, many Aerospace & Defense products, equipment, systems and platforms are often deployed in the field for years or even decades before they are refurbished, retired or replaced.

As a result, the in-service configuration or “As-X” configuration, undergoes a long lifecycle of continuous change due to maintenance, repairs, overhaul, upgrades mission provisioning, and eventual retirement with some recycling of components.

A&D OEM suppliers and MRO service contractors require nimble low-overhead Configuration Management tools that can efficiently manage, update, and track in real-time the As-Deployed configuration of assets located in the field, far removed from the As-Built specifications and engineering PDM databases.

Functionality for change control, impact analysis, change management, change implementation and change tracking must be flawless and easy to use by casual users, not just CM specialists.

Learn more about the Configuration Management needs of the Aviation, Aerospace & Defense industry in this CMsights article and for A&D suppliers and contractors, this recent post.

Read about the use of Configuration Management in other industries HERE.