The ANSI/EIA standard for configuration management principles.
EIA-649C is the ANSI standard for configuration management, maintained by SAE International's G33 Configuration Management Committee. Unlike MIL-HDBK-61B (which is DoD-specific), EIA-649C applies to both commercial and defense programs and is widely adopted across aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and enterprise technology industries.
The standard defines configuration management as encompassing five disciplines: Configuration Management Planning, Configuration Identification, Configuration Change Management, Configuration Status Accounting, and Configuration Verification and Audit. EIA-649C emphasizes principles over prescriptive procedures — allowing organizations to tailor CM implementation to their specific products and risk environments.
Configuration Management Plan documenting the organization's CM approach, roles, tools, and procedures.
Product configuration documentation structure, baseline definitions, and identifier assignment.
Change classification, impact analysis, engineering change requests and orders, and implementation control.
Tracking of current configuration and historical change records across all configuration items.
Functional and physical configuration audits verifying alignment between documentation and actual product configuration.
Templates and implementation resources for EIA-649C are available through the ELDR Institute Knowledge Hub and via direct request.