Towards a Lifecycle Information Framework and Technology in Manufacturing

Industry has been chasing the dream of integrating and linking data across the product lifecycle and enterprises for decades. However, industry has been challenged by the fact that the context in which data is used varies based on the function / role in the product lifecycle that is interacting with the data. Holistically, the data across the product lifecycle must be considered an unstructured data-set because multiple data repositories and domain-specific schema exist in each phase of the lifecycle. This paper explores a concept called the Lifecycle Information Framework and Technology (LIFT). LIFT is a conceptual framework for lifecycle information management and the integration of emerging and existing technologies, which together form the basis of a research agenda for dynamic information modeling in support of digital-data curation and reuse in manufacturing. This paper provides a discussion of the existing technologies and activities that the LIFT concept leverages. Also, the paper describes the motivation for applying such work to the domain of manufacturing. Then, the LIFT concept is discussed in detail, while underlying technologies are further examined and a use case is detailed. Lastly, potential impacts are explored.