Adding a New Characteristic to Planning Area

Dear Friends,

I want to add a new characteristic to the existing CVCs in the Planning Area. I understand that adding a characteristic is a bigger process by way of deactivating the existing Planning area and reinitialization etc. Could anyone pls let me know the steps/procedure to be performed before I start working on this or if anyone has a detailed documentation on this it will be great. Would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks.

Regards

Bala