Baselines

Note: There is a newer version of this specification see VEC 2.1.0

Baselines

A BaselineSpecification defines a set of ItemVersions (Document- and PartVersions) that relate to each other in a certain way e.g. all parts and documents in their specific versions that contributed to a specific manufactured result.

Baselines are a standard mechanism to support change, release and configuration management and are often used throughout the whole product life cycle. In the VEC, baselines themselves are Specifications and thus content of a DocumentVersion, which is equivalent to the fact that they are versioned information themselves.

In a product development for wiring harnesses, the content of a baseline is growing over a period (e.g. system schematics are created before the definition of the physical wiring harness). In this process, items are created and added to the baseline (based on other items from the baseline). Additionally, items in the baseline can be changed, following the rules of the respective development process. Such a baseline has the BaselineState.Draft. At a well-defined point in time, the content of baseline is checked and released. After this, the baseline cannot be changed without creating a new version of the baseline itself. Such a baseline has the BaselineState.Frozen.

Baselines are normally defined for a certain scope (e.g. a specific vehicle, a specific product). During the product development it is possible, that a baseline is incomplete. A reason for this might be, that not all development artefacts (e.g. wiring harnesses) are defined in this phase of the development process even though all artefacts are required for the final product. Such BaselineSpecifications have a Partial content.