Version management – also known as revision control – describes the systematic handling of changes to production-relevant data, documents and process definitions. In manufacturing, this includes recipes, work plans, routings, inspection plans, machine parameters, software versions and technical documents.
The goal is to know unambiguously at any time: Which version is valid? When was it changed? Who changed it? And which version was used for a specific product or batch?
Without this clarity, quality deviations arise without explainable cause, scrap cannot be traced back to its origin, and traceability gaps appear in the event of complaints.
Industrial practice distinguishes between version and revision. A version describes a released, operationally valid state. A revision is a concrete change within that version – documented with timestamp, reason for change and responsible person.
This distinction enables granular traceability without sacrificing operational clarity: production staff work with one clearly valid version while the complete change history remains reconstructable in the background.
In modern manufacturing environments, revision control is implemented digitally. Recipes, work plans and parameters are stored with versioning: each change creates a new revision while old states remain fully available.
The decisive advantage is the link between batches and the process version valid at the time of production. When a complaint is received for a specific batch, it is immediately visible which recipe version, inspection plan and parameters applied at that time – no archive search required. This is where version management and batch traceability merge directly.
IATF 16949, ISO 9001, IFS Food and BRCGS all require that production-relevant documents are changed in a controlled manner and that changes are documented traceably. Version management is the technical foundation that ensures approvals and process data cannot be manipulated and are unambiguously verifiable in audits.
Anyone who cannot prove in an audit which version was used for a specific batch has a structural problem – regardless of whether the production was actually correct.
Without digital version management the same problems recur: multiple versions of a work instruction circulate in parallel as printouts on the shop floor, changes are implemented without formal approval, historical batches cannot be reconstructed because the document status at production time was not secured. These problems are structurally difficult to solve with paper and Excel because neither enforces versioning.
What is the difference between version management and document management? Document management handles files – filing, access, archiving. Version management is more specific: controlled management of changes with complete change history, timestamps, approval status and linkage to production history. A DMS can include version management – but does not have to.
Does every parameter change need to be documented as a revision? That depends on the change control process. Quality-relevant parameters – temperature, pressure, cycle times – must be changed in a controlled manner. Strictly documented change control typically applies to safety-critical and customer-specified parameters.
Is version management relevant even without certification requirements? Yes. Anyone who wants to deliver reproducible quality and prove in the event of a complaint what was produced when and how needs version management regardless of standards. The economic justification: fewer errors from incorrect data states, faster root cause analysis, better scalability across multiple plants.