Short Configuration Management Chain
Configuration management is either limited to the R&D phase or not implemented at all, resulting in a lack of full integration from R&D to production and sales.
Full-value-chain Configuration Management
Full-valued-chain configuration management establishes an enterprise-wide product configuration management framework spanning product planning, product development, manufacturing, and sales.
It enables product configuration to act as the collaborative backbone across key processes such as market management, product development, and customer delivery.
It enables product configuration to act as the collaborative backbone across key processes such as market management, product development, and customer delivery.
Business Challenges
01
02
Inconsistent Configuration Definitions
Configuration definition descriptions lack standardization, making it difficult to achieve consistency across the enterprise.
03
Low Efficiency in Product Definition
Lack of configuration constraint management and effective means of verifying accuracy, and ineffective configuration combinations that cannot be automatically identified, resulting in inefficient product definition.
04
Inaccurate Change Switching
Configuration data lacks effective control, making it challenging to support accurate configuration changes.
05
Immature Sales Configuration Management
Sales configuration management is not mature, and configuration data is disconnected from engineering and production, which necessitates extensive manual offline comparison, resulting in inefficiency and inconsistency.
Solution Overview
The Gant software configuration solution covers the entire value chain of configuration management, spanning product planning, engineering, production and sales:
● Unified configuration resource definition solution
Standardized product model management, establishing a unified enterprise-wide configuration dictionary library.
Standardized product model management, establishing a unified enterprise-wide configuration dictionary library.
● Configuration management solution for R&D
Defining the relationship between product planning activities and configuration management, and outlining the scope of product development through engineering configuration.
Defining the relationship between product planning activities and configuration management, and outlining the scope of product development through engineering configuration.
● Configuration management solution for production
Managing the processes, standards and specific practices for the effective time of different manufacturing sites through production configuration management.
Managing the processes, standards and specific practices for the effective time of different manufacturing sites through production configuration management.
● Configuration management solution for sales
Taking over engineering configuration, defining the processes, standards and specific practices for sales resources in alignment with sales strategies.
Taking over engineering configuration, defining the processes, standards and specific practices for sales resources in alignment with sales strategies.
Solution Values
Entire business chain configuration solution
Unified configuration definition
Business configuration consistency
More rigorous configuration constraint rule definitions
More flexible configuration validity control
Enhanced and efficient sales configuration management
FAQ
What is full-lifecycle configuration management, and why do manufacturing enterprises need it?
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Full-lifecycle configuration management refers to defining products through configuration from product planning and development to manufacturing and marketing. It delivers the following benefits:
• Establishes a unified language and description framework across departments, improving collaboration efficiency and accuracy.
• Enables the latest R&D innovations to be rapidly and precisely delivered to customers through configuration, accelerating time-to-market.
• Allows the latest market demands to be quickly fed back into the enterprise, enabling faster response and improving product competitiveness.
• Uses configuration as a bridge connecting R&D, manufacturing, and sales — improving collaboration efficiency and accuracy, ensuring product quality, shortening delivery cycles, and increasing customer satisfaction.
• Establishes a unified language and description framework across departments, improving collaboration efficiency and accuracy.
• Enables the latest R&D innovations to be rapidly and precisely delivered to customers through configuration, accelerating time-to-market.
• Allows the latest market demands to be quickly fed back into the enterprise, enabling faster response and improving product competitiveness.
• Uses configuration as a bridge connecting R&D, manufacturing, and sales — improving collaboration efficiency and accuracy, ensuring product quality, shortening delivery cycles, and increasing customer satisfaction.
What types of products are suitable for configuration-driven management?
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Products with large-scale production and rich variant combinations (e.g., passenger vehicles) are ideally suited for configuration management. For highly customized products (low volume, high mix), configuration management can significantly improve Lead-to-Cash (LTC) efficiency.
Why is it necessary to define configuration rules?
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Defining configuration rules externalizes and formalizes engineering constraint knowledge — turning implicit technical know-how into explicit, reusable knowledge. These rules then consistently govern product development, manufacturing, and sales using the same logic.
Configuration rules are also an effective mechanism for controlling product complexity and variety.
Configuration rules are also an effective mechanism for controlling product complexity and variety.
Can configuration management be split by function? For example, managing all sales-related configurations only in the sales system?
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This approach is not recommended. Sales configurations and engineering configurations have complex interdependencies and should ideally share the same configuration engine. Managing them separately often leads to misalignment between sales and engineering configurations.
How can enterprises address the challenges of excessive special orders, slow response, and long delivery cycles?
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This can be tackled from two dimensions:
1. Strengthen collaboration between product planning, R&D, and marketing using configuration as the bridge.Forward-looking market demands should be rapidly fed back to product planning, where they are analyzed and converted into planning configurations, then passed to R&D. R&D further decomposes the requirements into engineering configurations and executes development accordingly. By rapidly responding to forward-looking market needs, enterprises can efficiently transform demand into products, reducing the number of special orders while leveraging configuration agility to shorten delivery cycles.
2. Systematically structure and accumulate product and demand knowledge, and gradually convert unavoidable special orders into standard configuration options. Over time, special orders are progressively transformed into regular orders, improving response speed and shortening delivery lead times.
1. Strengthen collaboration between product planning, R&D, and marketing using configuration as the bridge.Forward-looking market demands should be rapidly fed back to product planning, where they are analyzed and converted into planning configurations, then passed to R&D. R&D further decomposes the requirements into engineering configurations and executes development accordingly. By rapidly responding to forward-looking market needs, enterprises can efficiently transform demand into products, reducing the number of special orders while leveraging configuration agility to shorten delivery cycles.
2. Systematically structure and accumulate product and demand knowledge, and gradually convert unavoidable special orders into standard configuration options. Over time, special orders are progressively transformed into regular orders, improving response speed and shortening delivery lead times.
How can configuration data improve efficiency in handling special orders?
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An order configuration captures both standard configurations and customer-specific requirements (special configurations). By resolving the SuperBOM based on the order configuration, the standard BOM content becomes the initial Order BOM. On that basis, dedicated parts are designed according to special configuration requirements and incorporated into the Order BOM, ultimately forming the final BOM for that special order.
In this way, even special orders can fully leverage the advantages of the configurable SuperBOM to rapidly obtain a complete BOM.
In this way, even special orders can fully leverage the advantages of the configurable SuperBOM to rapidly obtain a complete BOM.
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