An Operational Tool to Assess Configuration Lifecycle Maturity

The use of product configurators is a well-established strategy for companies to support their products' different life cycle phases (engineering, sales, manufacturing, services). The configuration lifecycle management concept is highly relevant for complex configurable products. The business value gained comes in the form of improved lead-times, quality, and costs; benefits perceived both internally by the company and externally by their customers, in the form of increased satisfaction. The size of these benefits is also related to the maturity of the organization with regards to configuration lifecycle management. Therefore, this paper examines an operational approach to assess the level of configuration lifecycle maturity. The focus is on how to guide manufacturing companies to achieve the full potentials from operating configurators across all lifecycle phases of their products. Furthermore, how to assess and improve the utilization of configurators across all product's lifecycle phases within manufacturing companies will be elaborated. The findings of this paper are supplemented with a case study conducted at an engineering company that has been working with configurators for 10 years and it has now high emphasis on digitalization.