The Opportunity - Improving Aerospace Configuration Management

Meeting aerospace configuration control mandates involves a host of issues such as data access control, configuration context and release management, just to name a few factors. Currently, many companies rely on the existing product lifecycle management (PLM) environment to identify and sort out issues during data release. This has proven to be inadequate.

In this paper, it is postulated that new design tools employing automation can save a great deal of time when meeting these mandates and eliminate errors as well. The tools are based on the model-based development (MBD) process, which puts much more emphasis on the actual data instead of simply drawings. This paper explores how leading aerospace original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are adopting new capabilities for the designers during the development process in an effort to mitigate errors related to data inconsistencies.