CONTACT Software is expanding its portfolio to include variant management for specifications. This new function enables the systematic management of requirements across product variants.
Creating and maintaining requirements for product variants often involves substantial effort. Furthermore, there is a risk of inconsistencies: the same requirement might be phrased or interpreted differently across various product variants, leading to errors, a decline in quality, and increased overhead.
To address these challenges, CONTACT Software integrates variant management for specifications in CIM Database PLM. “This enhancement empowers our customers to master increasing complexity and elevate their product documentation to a new level,” says Anica Kleinjan, Product Manager PLM at CONTACT Software. “It’s a decisive step toward accelerating time to market.”
This is how variant management for specifications works in detail: Valid characteristics and combinations are defined, forming the foundation for efficient requirement definition and management. Within the MaxSpec Editor, a comprehensive 150% specification is modeled. It contains all potential requirements for possible product variants, along with selection rules that define which requirements apply to specific product characteristics.
From this central source, users can generate the individual 100% specification for a particular variant. This process ensures the consistent definition of requirements across different variants, significantly enhancing quality and minimizing errors. The valid variant configurations are stored in the Variant Manager, from which concrete 100% specifications can be derived. As a result, variant-specific specifications are created significantly faster.
Each generated requirement includes an explicit reference to its original requirement within the 150% specification, along with a variant classification. This guarantees seamless traceability, as requirements and associated components can be clearly attributed to a specific product variant.
CONTACT launched variant management for specifications alongside its new 2026 release.
