Almost all products are designed using an iterative approach in which the one version of the product is manufactured and sold while the next version of the product is being developed. As a result, Windchill provides a variety of tools and functions for tracking and managing parts and products throughout their lifecycle.

Managing and controlling a configurable product structure is very important because an entire family of potential variant part structures can be created from a single configurable product structure. In addition, a configurable product structure may be used by a variety of personnel to rapidly create numerous variant product structures.

As a result, Windchill provides an additional capability, a default baseline, for managing the components and logic that comprise a configurable product structure.