Best Practice for dealing with multiple revisions of Customer Geometry?

Hi Guys,

I was wondering what are your best practices concerning receiving multiple sets of  the same customer geometry (just revised) over time?

For example:

1. Working with Best Customer, new project.
2. Customer Engineer sends an assembly of their design.  (STEP files or other "neutral" data types.)
   1. Our design has to integrate into their design.
3. Our work begins. 
   1. Import or Open Customer Geometry
   2. Use customer supplied geometry to design our product.
4. Time passes, days or weeks.
5. Customer sends a revision to their design.
   1. New revision might have new parts.
   2. New revision might just be revised parts.
   3. Changes might be obvious when reviewing.
   4. Changes might NOT be obvious.
   5. File names may or may not have been changed.
6. We have to review and integrate the customer's revision into our design to make sure we are compensating for all the changes they sent.
   1. Save new revision into a new directory.
   2. Save As and add an identifier.
      1. Could be *-01, 02, 03, etc.
      2. Could be date based.  *_20170609,  *_20170801, etc.
   3. Open old revision and new revision and compare  (optional)
   4. Work new version into our existing design.

So how do you handle such a situation to minimize fuss and still get the job done quickly?

-marc

CAD / PLM Systems Manager

TriMark Corporation, New Hampton, Iowa