ABSTRACT
Configuration management is one of the supporting processes of the hardware design life cycle. Configuration management starts during the planning phase, continues through the on-going production of the hardware, and into the long-term archive of life cycle data long after the hardware has ceased production. The configuration management processes allow hardware manufacturers to make consistent copies of hardware items. The configuration management processes also allow hardware developers to make orderly and controlled changes to hardware and hardware life cycle data. This could include modification or deletion of requirements or functions, resolving problems in hardware or hardware life cycle data, or updating versions of hardware installed on a circuit card. The dissimilarity in configuration identification can take many forms, but when using most of the commercial computer-based configuration management tools it boils down to giving each data item a unique name (or number) and letting the configuration management tool preserve and manage the different versions of the item.
