Managing Aircraft Configuration Across Decades of Service

Aircraft and aircraft components can remain in service for 30, 40, or even 50+ years, undergoing countless modifications, repairs, upgrades, service bulletins, component replacements, and regulatory changes along the way. Maintaining an accurate understanding of the as-designed, as-built, as-delivered, and as-maintained configuration of each individual aircraft and component can therefore become an enormous configuration-management and PLM challenge. How do organizations maintain configuration continuity throughout the aircraft lifecycle? Where are the biggest challenges: PLM/MRO integration, serialized components, modifications, legacy data, supplier information, software configurations, or maintaining the Digital Thread over decades? What approaches have worked in practice, and where do today's PLM, ERP and MRO systems still fall short?