I will continue to discuss PDM vs PLM and today will talk about the topic that always drives interest and confusion with anyone – revision and change control. If you missed my previous articles, please check them out.
PDM vs PLM: Current Status Quo, Challenges, and Future Development
PDM vs. PLM: From File Management to Connected Data, Product Lifecycle, and Product Models
The increasing complexity of products and the need for better collaboration are challenging engineers and traditional PDM systems, particularly in the areas of revision control and lifecycle management. In my previous articles, I discussed the transition from PDM’s file-centric approach to new PLM models that rely on granular data and collaborative change management. Today, I want to explore how revision and change management processes were traditionally handled in PDM systems, the data and change management challenges we face today, and the potential solutions offered by modern PLM systems.
History of Revision Control and Change Management
Product data management (PDM) has started as a mechanism to manage CAD files and enabling engineers and other users in organizations to efficiently manage and share product-related data. By providing a centralized repository for product data (predominantly CAD files), PDM systems help teams collaborate more effectively, reduce errors, and improve overall productivity. However, the patterns of data and change management are changing. A typical set of engineering data management by CAD system includes computer-aided design (CAD) files (parts, assemblies, drawings), parts information, manufacturing instructions, requirements, notes, and other documents (eg. weldment drawing or STEP file). PDM systems provide a centralized repository for product data, enabling teams to access, share, and manage data in a controlled and secure environment.
The complexity of revision management for CAD files and related metadata managed by PDM system historically dependent on the way desktop CAD systems are operating with the data. The files need to be located in the local file directory and the system needed to prevent other users from simultaneous changes. The changes were aggregated later in a more complex change processes allowing to different people in the organization to manage approvals and notifications about the changes (eg. ECO process).
As products become increasingly complex, managing revisions and changes becomes more challenging. PDM systems provide revision control capabilities, including check-in/check-out, versioning, and change management, to help teams manage lifecycle complexity and ensure data integrity. But the need to manage changes in the modern products including mechanical, electronics and software systems raises the bar of complexity even more.
In my previous article I demonstrated how revision and control management was growing beyond management of single files, leading to complexity of multiple CAD systems. Even more, modern cloud based PDM systems bring another level of complexity when each CAD system manages its own design revisions, but still doesn’t solve the problem of CAD data management for complex systems with multiple design PDM systems used in the development process (mechanical, electronics, etc).
Product development process span across multiple lifecycle phases and bring even more complex processes related to reuse existing design data, sharing data between engineering processes, manufacturing processes, maintenance, and support. This is where PLM strategy and PLM software starts to be involved.
From the revision and change management, Product lifecycle management (PLM) is a business process that manages the entire history of changes, revisions, and approvals related to the product, from inception to engineering, design, manufacture, service, and disposal. It usually involved in the management of different product structures (aka BOM types) and serves as a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprises. By managing revisions and change processes of the product lifecycle effectively, organizations can achieve the traceability of product changes, ensure compliance and regulation requirements, improve quality processes, and reduce cost.
One of the most sophisticated change management processes can be organized to span across multiple enterprise systems such as MRP, ERP, MES and other systems. This is where integrating PDM, PLM with ERP systems is required to connect product data with business processes, providing a seamless digital value chain. By integrating PDM/PLM with ERP, organizations can improve data quality, reduce errors, and increase productivity, ultimately leading to better business outcomes.
5 Complexities of Revision Control and Lifecycle Management
To manage revisions and ECO processes is complex in the modern products and manufacturing environments. In this section, I want to share my observation about top 5 complexities.
1. Managing Complex Multi-Disciplinary Product Structures
Modern products integrate mechanical, electrical, software, and IoT components, each with unique data requirements and lifecycle rules. This complexity makes traditional CAD-focused PDM tools created for management of CAD files incapable to manage revisions. How to address the impact of PCBA changes on the geometry of plastic part, connect them together and to record the impact of this change? How to create a unified view of the product information across multiple design system and define the even when and how to uprev an assembly from the changes of design done in multiple systems. How to manage interchangeability rules between them? To ensure consistency and synchronization across all domains is becoming a nig problem.
2. Supporting Collaboration with Multiple People, Simultaneous Changes, and Dependencies
Distributed teams often work simultaneously on shared product data, which introduces risks such as version conflicts, dependency mismatches, and update errors. What if multiple teams need to work in different geographical locations and time zones? How to ensure data locking and the same time to allow to these teams not to block each others. It includes internal and external users, contractors and suppliers. Even for one team, how to manage a change that need to happen in parallel with multiple parts included in the same assembly. Will you need to increase the revision of the assembly for each part changes included in the same assembly. How to aggregate changes done by multiple users at the same time and manage impact analysis and dependency resolutions.
3. Working with Multiple Cloud and Desktop Design Systems
Organizations increasingly rely on a mix of cloud-based and desktop design tools, making it difficult to integrate and synchronize data between these systems. Modern platforms overcome this by supporting multi-system integrations through APIs and connectors. This ensures seamless data flow between tools like Fusion 360 and SolidWorks, providing all stakeholders with up-to-date information regardless of the design environment used. The same can happen with the mix and MCAD and ECAD tools that are using different PDM software.
4. Managing Configurable Products
Configurable products with multiple variants and options present significant challenges in managing revisions and dependencies. Variants (or so called product configurations) are notoriously complex to manage with rule-based configurations, part number allocations for variants and mixed use of configurations by CAD systems. To apply a clear revision control for product configurations while ensuring traceability of changes in complex products is a huge issue that can bring many engineering and manufacturing systems in the full stop.
5. Working with Changes Across Multiple Lifecycle Phases
The last, but for sure not the least aspect of complexity – management of changes related to multiple lifecycle changes. Companies are looking how to manage changes impacting product in different product stages. Introducing of software in many manufacturing products is one of the triggers that requires to manage these changes. By making a change to a software and uploading software to already manufactured products, products requires validation of traceability rules and potential adjustments related to each specific hardware configuration already shipped to the customer.
Collaborative Software and Modern Data Management
Modern collaborative software and data management have transformed the traditional approach to revision control by enabling simultaneous changes, improving collaboration, and eliminating many of the bottlenecks associated with older systems.
Historically, revision control followed a sequential approach. A common method involved a check-out/check-in process where one person worked on a document or file at a time, effectively locking it for others. Changes were made in isolation, and the updated version was checked back in, creating a linear version history. While this ensured traceability, it came at the cost of collaboration, as only one individual could edit a file at any given time.
In contrast, modern collaborative tools, such as Google Docs, Figma, Onshape, Autodesk Fusion, OpenBOM, allow simultaneous editing, fundamentally changing how teams work together. Real-time collaboration is now possible, with multiple users editing the same document or dataset concurrently. Changes are instantly visible to all participants, enabling faster and more dynamic workflows. However, these tools make fundamental shift in revision and change management control. Let’s discuss how it is changing.
Revision and Change Management Evolution
Modern CAD/PDM/PLM platforms changes the paradigm of revision control and change management that for the last 20-30 years dominant the industry. In the traditional PDM/PLM systems, users independently needed to check-out files (and data), make changes, check-in and release the assembly including all data. So, if the changes need to be done by multiple users, the process will cause locking and dependencies. It also triggered creation of extra revisions to reflect changes performed by each user.
Modern CAD/PDM/PLM systems are changing the paradigm. You can think about it as a flipping the table upside down. These systems create a new collaborative environment where multiple users can perform the changes. This is so called a “workspace” or “latest state” when everyone can make changes and each change is granularly recorded in the history for traceability purposes. Some of these systems are capable to perform undo/redo to a specific point of changes. It allows to multiple users to perform the changes without locking each other. As soon as all users reaching the level of “completeness”, a revision is created as an immutable copy. The history of all revisions is preserved in the history and can be referred and used at any time.
The picture below shows you the difference between those two approaches.
The new model solves many problems I described earlier such as ability to perform coordinated changes in multiple elements of the product systems and subsystems, not to lock the data for a specific user and perform data changes simultaneously. For more complex multi-disciplinary products and complex systems, such a method allows to perform changes in different design (CAD) systems
What is my conclusion?
Revision and change control are critical processes in product development, but their complexity has grown alongside modern product design and collaboration needs. Traditional PDM systems, while effective for managing CAD files and desktop oriented workflows, struggle to address the demands of multi-disciplinary products, distributed teams, and lifecycle integration. These limitations highlight the need for a more advanced and connected approach, which modern PLM solutions are well-positioned to provide.
To effectively manage the increasing complexity of revisions and changes, organizations should consider adopting PLM platforms that developed cloud-based technologies, granular data models, and collaborative workflows. These systems enable simultaneous, traceable changes, streamline cross-domain integration, and support seamless data sharing across the product lifecycle. By transitioning to PLM, companies can reduce bottlenecks, improve data quality, and ensure the scalability required for modern, complex product development processes.
Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Disclaimer: I’m the co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM, a digital-thread platform providing cloud-native PDM, PLM, and ERP capabilities. With extensive experience in federated CAD-PDM and PLM architecture, I’m advocates for agile, open product models and cloud technologies in manufacturing. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.
