ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT: PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is a set of capabilities that enable an enterprise to manage its products and services throughout the business lifecycle. A significant trend in the present global market is the increasing need for co-operation among enterprises, through which organisations can increase flexibility and reduce operational costs by focusing on their core competencies. However, enterprise applications need to be interoperable to achieve seamless interaction across organisations, leading to the need for adoption of data standards. This contribution to the book proposes a framework to support PLM, enhancing the interoperability in networked environments, and assisting the integration of reference models described following dissimilar methodologies. This framework assists in the automatic mapping among ISO10303 STEP, UML and XML models. The proposed work results from research developed and validated in the scope of the IMS SMART-fm project (www.smart-fm.funstep.org, www.ims.org), involving partners from USA, Europe, Canada and Australia, using emerging approaches for modelling and technology.