A good configuration management process for creating high-tech systems provides cost savings, strength and fully transparent development and production. Frank Ploegmakers, , talks about obstacles and common mistakes in configuration management. “Those responsible for technology, development and operations are not always able to understand the essence of the configuration management complexity.”
Within a high tech organization, hordes of engineers produce an enormous amount of technical data: partial designs of printed circuit boards, motors, sensors, mechanical and optical components, you name it. Electronics engineers, software designers, optical engineers, mechanical engineers: they all have their own computer tools. Even prototyping itself is shifting to the virtual environment. Remove the design tools from any high tech company and you may as well shut it down.
The discipline of configuration management has been developed to control the coherence of all this design information. It ensures that different disciplines can work together on a design and that the process from design through to the delivered product is controlled.
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