White Paper: Advanced Strategies For Configuration Management: Lessons Learned From The Aviation Industry

In any environment involving complex equipment, effective configuration management controls are essential to effectively support the ongoing engineering, maintenance, safety, and regulatory requirements associated with operations of the equipment. Even the smallest of details related to equipment and parts configuration management can be significant; any omissions or errors resulting from ineffective configuration management controls, no matter how small, can sometimes lead to serious and often dangerous consequences.

The term "configuration management" can actually encompass a number of subjects and associated tasks, including engineering design, engineering design changes or "progression", engineering drawings or document controls (as presented in operational technical manuals), records management, parts/material management, or any combinations of these. Configuration management documents all of the original parts and assemblies included on the original equipment after delivery, and tracks any engineering changes made throughout the life cycle of that equipment.

The aviation industry requires some of the most stringent configuration management practices of any complex equipment operations environment. In the aviation industry, configuration management is highly structured and requires conformance with dictated industry standards in terms of how aircraft configuration changes are documented, presented, and maintained. The aviation sector is somewhat unique when compared to other industries, in that these standards are universally applied across the industry, enabling operators who purchase equipment or aircraft from multiple OEMs to receive all of their support data in standardized formats. This standardization reduces cross- training requirements and enables the use of single entry point solutions to access this data.