Stage in the life of a product or project that, from the point of view of a company, is of commercial importance.

In a company, products and projects go through numerous life cycle phases from their creation to the end of maintenance.

You create a life cycle phase if you want to document, or publish on the Internet, specific configurations (that means the processing statuses of objects) in the relevant stage of creation, development, production, or maintenance.

A product can go through the following life cycle phases:

• Sales (as sold)
• Specification (as specified)
• Engineering/design (as designed / as engineered)
• Work scheduling (as planned)
• Production (as built)
• Delivery (as shipped)
• Plant maintenance (as maintained)

In Customizing Configuration Management you can freely define the life cycle phases necessary for your company (work step Application control ® Define life cycle profile).

In the life cycle phases contained in the standard system in the configuration profile CEP you have special functions for Collaborative Engineering. The following features apply in the configuration folders that you create in one of these life cycle phases:

• The system displays the icon . Click on this to publish the configuration folder.
• The system hides the icon . In the life cycle phases of Collaborative Engineering you can not create any Baselines.