NISTIR 7211

Product Lifecycle Management 

Support: A Challenge in Supporting 

Product Design and Manufacturing in 

a Networked Economy

Eswaran Subrahmanian

Sudarsan Rachuri

Steven J. Fenves

Sebti Foufou

Ram D. Sriram

 
NISTIR 7211

Product Lifecycle Management 

Support: A Challenge in Supporting 

Product Design and Manufacturing in 

a Networked Economy

Eswaran Subrahmanian 

Sudarsan Rachuri 

Steven J. Fenves 

Sebti Foufou 

Ram D. Sriram 

Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 

Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory 

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8260 

March 2005

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

Carlos M. Gutierrez, Secretary 

TECHNOLOGY ADMINISTRATION 

Phillip J. Bond, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY 

Hratch G. Semerjian, Acting Director 

 
Product Lifecycle Management Support: A Challenge in Supporting Product Design 

and Manufacturing in a Networked Economy 

Eswaran Subrahmanian1

, Sudarsan Rachuri2, Steven J. Fenves3, 

Sebti Foufou4

, Ram D. Sriram5

Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, 

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 

{sub, sudarsan, sfenves, sfoufou, sriram}@cme.nist.gov 

Abstract 

In this paper, we provide an overview of the changing design and manufacturing landscape in

the 21st century that has come about because of the arrival of IT and the changing global

conditions. Based on this overview and a review of the current state of IT for PLM support in

the design and manufacturing sector, we identify the areas of need for standards. A review of

areas covered by standards leads us to the development of an initial typology of standards and a 

potential path for bringing convergence of these standards in support of PLM. We make a case 

throughout the paper that given the nature of the task we need to aspire to create open standards

with wide participation. We conclude by arguing that there is an important role to be played in

this context by institutions such as NIST as a neutral party in the standards debates and 

implementations. 

Keywords: Product lifecycle, PLM systems, interoperability, data exchange, standards,

product design

1. Introduction

There has been a significant shift in the design and manufacturing of products since the 

post-World War II industrial setting that created a large number of vertically integrated

industries. The modern global economic structures that have evolved in the last two 

decades have changed several aspects of the product design and realization processes. 

Gone are the days of pure mass production, where economy of scale was the primary 

driving force in the creation and structuring of product design and manufacturing 

organizations. The aerospace and automobile industries now see themselves as system 

 

1 Eswaran is with Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, He is currently guest researcher at the MSID Division,

NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, Email: sub@cs.cmu.edu 2

 Sudarsan Rachuri is with George Washington University, DC. He is currently guest researcher at the MSID Division,

NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, Email: sudarsan@gwu.edu 3

 Steven J. Fenves is Emeritus University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; He is currently guest 

researcher at the MSID Division, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, Email: sfenves@cme.nist.gov 4

 Sebti Foufou is with LE2i Laboratory, University of Burgundy, B.P. 47870, Dijon France. He is currently guest 

researcher at the MSID Division, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, Email: sfoufou@u-bourgogne.fr 5

 Ram Sriram is leading the Design and Process Group at NIST. 

1
integrators; their role is not to manufacture all of the underlying parts and components 

but to purchase them from a global marketplace. In this new context, managing variety 

and providing mass customization have become the driving forces in organizing design 

and manufacturing organizations. The most visible form of this approach is the rise of 

the modular designs that are starting to dominate the strategies of product development 

[1]. Platform based designs, common architectures with substitutability, and plug and 

play capabilities are increasingly becoming the norm [2]. These are responses to the 

changing economic and technological landscapes as well as to the variety demanded by a 

global customer base [3]. While the movement towards modularity has been successful in

the electronic consumer product and micro-computer industries, there are significant 

limits to modularity in the domain of complex electro-mechanical systems [4]. In this 

larger context, what it means to create products and manage the intellectual property of 

networked firms are the questions underlying the movement towards Product Life Cycle 

Management (PLM). PLM is a strategic approach to creating and managing a company's

product-related intellectual capital, from its initial conception to retirement. As

information technology (IT) undertaking, supporting PLM entails the modeling, 

capturing, exchanging and using information and data in all PLM decision making 

processes. 

 

In this paper we explore trends in product design and manufacturing and their 

implications for the management of product development, the development of standards 

and the preservation of competitive advantage for the manufacturing sector in the US. 

The changing landscape of the design and manufacturing sector in the 21st century is

described in section 2. Section 3 reviews the current state of IT use in design and 

manufacturing. Section 4 provides an overview of IT support for PLM in the networked 

economy. Section 5 reviews the state of commercial tools supporting PLM. Section 6 

provides results of a preliminary study of where standards are needed for supporting 

PLM and a brief comparison of US and overseas industries. Section 7 presents a 

typology of current standards and their convergence for PLM support. Finally, Section 8 

concludes with a summary and recommendations. 

2. Design and manufacturing in the 20th and 21st centuries 

Twentieth century manufacturing was heralded by the introduction by Henry Ford of

mass production that moved from custom made expensive automobile for the few to the 

standardized automobile for all [5]. This model of the manufacturing enterprise 

dominated the last century with its ability to create mass produced objects affordable by a 

large number of customers. The underlying model of design and production was based 

on standardization within a firm, allowing for independent manufacturing of several 

components that merged on the assembly line to create the product. Variants of this

model of design and production were exported and established in other countries, leading 

to the first models of globalization of firms [6]. This phase of globalization relied on a 

single-location based, vertically integrated production lines exploiting economies of 

scale. These models of globalization were often based on providing the same product 

irrespective of the needs and social preferences of the customer base. 

2
In the last two decades of the last century, there was a shift emerging in the

manufacturing industry driven by the disruptive technology of computers and the 

emergence of a worldwide transportation and telecommunication infrastructure. The 

transportation infrastructure aided by innovations such as the commercial jet plane and 

the giant container ships led to the easy movement of people and goods, while the 

communication infrastructure led to the movement of information and knowledge in an 

unprecedented manner. The authors of the book “Death of Distance” points out that we

are in the third phase of the revolution in technology that in succession changed the 

transportation first of goods, then of people, and now of ideas and information [7]. 

The implications of the above changes have been profound. First, the location of 

production was distributed across the globe to leverage the competitive advantage of 

different countries as the costs of transportation, codification and distribution of 

knowledge and transactions decreased, aided by the diffusion of new technologies. The 

world moved from manufacturing everything needed to produce a product within a

country, using raw material from all over the world, to the assembly of components and 

subsystems produced around the world, based on the competitive advantage of closeness 

to raw materials or low-cost labor. Meanwhile, as the non-industrialized world’s 

aspirations started matching those of the industrialized world, the demands for products 

and services have expanded to these countries. The age of global demand for customized

products had arrived. The response addressing these phenomena has often been termed

mass customization. The increase in demand for technological products and mass

customization worldwide has further accelerated the globalization of industries in the 

form of outsourcing and off-shoring. 

Before this socio-technical change took place, the social landscape that defined the 

vertically integrated economy of the US was one of lifetime employment and 

preservation of the intellectual capital of the firm in its people. Increasingly, the 

demographics of US and other industrialized countries and the slack in the engineering 

and science skill base in these countries are being compensated by the increasing skill 

base in erstwhile developing countries, available at lower costs. Thus, the emergent 

globalization has brought with it profound changes in the economies of both the 

industrialized and the developing world. 

This change did not happen overnight. It was triggered by critical innovations in 

computing and communications technology. While productivity improvements due to IT

have been questioned by some economists, management scientists and others have argued 

that productivity in US has been fueled by technology [8]. 

It is clear that while there have been improvements, the actual impact of IT on 

productivity is not yet a major contributor in the manufacturing industry globally [9]. In

this paper, we put forth the hypothesis that large improvements in productivity from IT 

will come only when the networked economy engendered by technology allows for the 

3
realization of positive network externalities6

 to their fullest extent. Part of the reason for 

not being able to exploit the positive network externalities comes from the lack of full

interoperability and the difficulty of adoption of these technologies by small and medium

enterprises (SMEs) [10], [11]. The SMEs (45 % of the US economy) form the bulk of the 

supplier base to the larger system integrators in the automobile and aerospace industries.

The cost of interoperability barriers of the IT systems used in engineering and 

manufacturing in the US auto industry, estimated to be of the order of $1 billion per year, 

is an indication of the industry’s inability to exploit IT to realize its full benefits [12]. It is 

in this context that information exchange standards will be critical and will determine 

what role IT will play in the design and manufacturing area. 

3. Current state of IT use in product design and manufacturing 

Computing in the design of products was first observed in the work of a Westinghouse

engineer in the early 1960’s who wrote a program to design a motor analytically [13]. 

The initial use of computers for drafting has morphed into Computer Aided Design 

(CAD), centered on the spatial definition (geometry) of the product. CAD is frequently 

augmented by physical model-based functional analyses for kinematics, structural 

strength, fluid flow, etc., collectively designated Computer Aided Engineering (CAE)7

. 

The developments in CAD were paralleled by developments in Computer Aided 

Manufacturing (CAM), for planning and monitoring manufacturing operations and for

creating programs for numericly controlled (NC) tools from the CAD geometry. In the 

last twenty years technological changes arising out of faster and cheaper computer 

hardware and better connectivity have created the possibilities of large scale interaction 

and real time collaboration in design and manufacturing, leading to applications in

manufacturing resource planning (MRP), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product

data management (PDM). However, the dream of full seamless interoperation across and

within organizations implied by the “death of distance” is yet to be realized. 

Debate will continue over what aspects of IT and how much of IT have helped the 

manufacturing industry. There is empirical evidence that IT has enhanced globalization, 

thus allowing the exploitation of global resources and globalized manufacturing, which in 

turn provided improvements in productivity at the level of the national economies [8]. 

A lesson from history 

As an industry moves from its birth through its early stages, it creates a surge of initial

productivity and then plateaus before a second of level of significant productivity 

improvement takes place [14]. This pattern has been observed in the evolution of the 

dynamo and the electric power network; parallels can be seen in the development of 

information and communications technologies. The second level of productivity takes 

place when the innovation becomes part of the fabric of the organizations and disappears 

 

6 Economists call failures in the behavior of an economic structure or a market negative externalities and the benefits positive externalities. The term

positive network externalities is used when the benefits accrue due to the presence of the economic network. We will use the term positive network 

externalities to identify benefits due to a network structure. 

7 In the electronics industry, functional and spatial design, analysis and simulation are collectively called CAD

4
into the background as a technology, accompanied by changes in work and organizational 

structures [14]. In a recent interview Professor Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute 

claims that IT is profoundly changing industrial organizations [15]. Professor Arthur 

claims that technologies, especially information technologies, are the backbone of 

cognitive and communication processes of organizations and the economy, just as the 

railroads provided the backbone of physical transport and communication processes at 

the turn of the last century. If history is a guide, IT as a means for communication, along 

with the ubiquity of computing power for use in mental skill automation similar to the 

dynamo for physical skill automation, will lead to the next boom in productivity. 

In the emerging model of product development and lifecycle management, the 

importance of information and IT enabling the provision of customer satisfaction and 

agility in the marketplace with new innovations is critical to the survival of today’s firm. 

Innovations arise from a continuous improvement of processes in what has been termed 

operational innovations [16]. Further, the tendency to modularize products will increase

the variety in products to satisfy different customer needs. This change implies that the 

economics of substitution will play a major role in the development of product platforms 

and product architectures [2]. In a networked enterprise, not all innovations are localized 

within a company; the nodes in the design and manufacturing network that are innovative 

are more directly involved and have a more direct impact on a automobile manufacturers’

(system integrators) product development activity [17]. 

DISPOSAL:

RECOVERY 

RECYCLING

PRODUCT USE: IDEATION:

W z ARRANTY EXPERIENCE MARKET RESEARCH 

MAINTENANCE RECORD USER FEEDBACK

INNOVATION 

CONCEPTUALIZATION z z

Figure 1. Epicycles in product life cycle development8

. 

 

8

 This figure is adopted from figure “Epicycles of Scientific Discovery,” in [18]

z

z z

z

z

 DESIGN ORGANIZATION:

 PEOPLE

 INFORMATION

 INFRASTRUCTURE

KNOWLEDGE 

 

CONCEPTUAL DESIGN: 

PRODUCT

PROCESS 

DESIGN EVALUATION:

 ANALYSIS 

 SIMULATION 

 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION 

 QUALITY EVALUATION 

MANUFACTURING: 

PLANNING

SUPPLY CHAIN 

CREATION

DISTRIBUTION

DETAILED DESIGN:

PRODUCT

PROCESS 

5
Interoperability 

Today’ s networked organizations are still only partially integrated islands of information

and tend to have a static view of the use of information, rather than viewing PLM as a 

holistic real-time control system that is continually adjusting and improving the 

underlying business and operational processes [19]. 

The new view of product life cycle is best illustrated through the metaphor of epicycles in 

the product lifecycle, illustrated in Figure 1. The nodes on the periphery stand for the 

major stages in the lifecycle: conceptualization; organization of resources; design; 

analysis, simulation and verification; manufacturing and distribution; in-use performance 

and customer feedback; and eventually disposition. The wide clockwise links on the 

periphery stand for the “normal” information flows from stage to stage, while the links on

the inside stand for the feedback information that creates the various epicycles or subloops of reappraisal, redesign and product improvement or evolution. The feedback loops 

shown in the figure are only suggestive to convey the idea of interdependence among the 

stages and are not comprehensive. 

A breakdown in any of the feedback links in the epicycles will lead to inefficient use of 

knowledge affecting both the efficiency of operation and the quality of the product. 

Stewart has made the claim that only 20% of a firm’s knowledge is effectively used by 

today’s organizations, providing further evidence that these epicycles are indeed broken 

[20]. Hence the conceptualization of product development presented in Figure 1 provides

credence to the analogy of today’s product life cycle management systems to a real-time

control system. This recognition has resulted in proposals for maturity models for

interoperability to asses and evaluate an organization’s ability to provide an interoperable 

environment [21], [22]. 

The importance of interoperability for PLM has been recognized by a number of 

institutions including the US DOD, the European Ministries of Defense and, more 

recently, by the vendor and end-user community [23], [24]. There are two further factors 

at work: first, globalization has spread the need for mass customization of products and 

services to different markets; and second, global environmental concerns have led to the 

heightened consideration of the servicing and disposal of products as integral parts of the

product development life cycle. It has been observed that the cost of servicing and 

evolving a product is higher than the initial development cost. 

A further push for addressing interoperability arises from the importance that economics 

of substitution will play in the continuous upgrade of complex systems in response to

changing technology. This can also be observed in the modular open systems approach 

advocated by the DOD Joint Task Force for future DOD acquisitions [25]. In all of these 

recommendations and efforts the ability to integrate legacy systems as well future 

technological innovations to interoperate seamlessly is the primary objective. The 

cornerstone in achieving this objective requires near decomposability of system, as was 

observed by Herbert Simon in his essay on “The Architecture of Complexity” [26]. We

6
argue that open standards and clear specification of interfaces provide complementary

means for achieving full interoperability. 

Standards 

In a recent interview in Business 2.0, Tony Scott, the CIO of GM, made a case for 

interoperability, by pointing out that the IT industry is at the same stage today as the 

automobile industry was at the beginning of the last century and that standardization 

allowed that industry to become mature and come to depend on the commoditization of 

parts and supplies. How standards emerge, how they are supported or opposed by 

different segments of industry, and how convergence occurs are often dependent on the 

context in which the industry and the stakeholders interests [27]. 

Continuing the historical comparison, if the networks of railroads had not been connected 

through standardization, the positive network externalities on the economy could not 

have been achieved. IT in manufacturing is at the same threshold today in making reality 

out of the possibilities of globally distributed networked organizations that exchange 

information and knowledge. Crossing this threshold will be impeded by the lack of 

standards that would allow for the interconnection of parts in the networked system of the 

economy. We contend that creating this new reality based on information technologies 

for product life cycle knowledge requires the development of open standards. 

4. Product life cycle management and the networked economy 

Product life cycle management (PLM) has come to signify what some call the 21st

century paradigm for product development. In this concept of PLM, the management of 

a product from inception to disposal is the strategic initiative that will define 21st century 

product development [28]. These claims have been made primarily because of the 

emergence of the networked firm and the networked economy, in contrast to the marketor hierarchy-based model of organizations that used a transactions cost model as the 

cornerstone for the choice of organizational structure [29], [30]. 

In the world of networked organization, relationships between the different nodes in the 

network are not of the same quality or character. This is due to the inability to arrive at 

complete modularity or decomposability because of various physical and organizational 

limitations. For example, Kamath and Liker [31] in examining the supplier interaction in 

the Japanese automobile industry identify four levels of supplier interaction: 

a) Partner: A full service provider whose relationship to the customer is that of equal 

and who often design entire subsystems for the customer and participates from the

earliest stages of the design. 

b) Mature: Full system supplier whose relationship with the customer is subordinate; 

the customer provides specifications and the supplier develops subsystems

independently with some customer guidance in design and pricing. 

7
c) Child: Customer provides the design and manufacturing specifications and the 

supplier executes them. 

d) Contractual: The supplier is used as an extension of the customer’s manufacturing 

capability. Often used for commodity items or standard parts. The customer

provides specifications or orders from a catalog and the supplier builds. 

This model of supplier relationship is also frequently found in the US and UK 

automobile industries [32]. The more standardized the parts are, the more applicable is 

the transaction cost market mechanism for procuring the parts. However, for higher levels 

of supplier interaction, traditional transaction cost models are not sufficient to explain the

outsourcing of designs by the parent company. It appears that at these levels the 

technical capabilities of the supplier and the innovations internal to the supplier are the 

key factors in the interactions, rather than pure transaction costs [32]. 

The above characterization of performance and interaction in a networked industry shows 

that several levels of information and knowledge exchange among the participants in the 

network are needed and that all such levels need to be standardized. 

5. Product life cycle management support architecture and the current status of 

commercial tools 

PLM entails the management of product design, manufacturing and service knowledge 

that goes beyond the interaction of suppliers with the system integrator. PLM reaches 

into the sales, customer service and product disposal activities that participate in the 

larger network. For example, a firm that is involved in the disposal of the product 

requires information on the material composition and assembly for optimizing its 

recovery of materials. Without a comprehensive information base providing the 

information required by the different partners in the entire life cycle, overall efficiencies

that can in principle be achieved in the network cannot be realized. It is in this sense that 

the system integrator such as an automobile manufacturer will also serve as an 

information provider to the nodes in the product life cycle network. 

The IT industry that supplies product knowledge management and engineering support 

systems to the design and manufacturing industry is currently vertically integrated. The

industry extensively uses proprietary standards. Vertically integrated support systems do 

not provide for opportunity of full diffusion of new innovations across the entire

community of users. The IT industry, in particular the sector that supports PLM systems, 

must go through the same kinds of processes that were described above for design and 

manufacturing organizations in order to become mature and ubiquitous. 

Various architectures for PLM support have been suggested [33; 34]. In all these 

architectures, the two major support functions are: (1) the support of information 

exchange among the enterprise nodes introduced in Figure 1; and (2) the support for data, 

information and knowledge integration within the nodes. A study by AMR identifying 

the provision of PLM support by a representative set of major vendors, presented in 

Figure 3, shows that the availability is partial and incomplete [33]. The study covers 

8
several areas beyond that of collaborative design. Some vendors cover several areas, 

while there are areas that are poorly covered or not covered at all by any vendor. Relying 

on a single vendor to cover all areas of PLM support would not provide the kind of 

innovation needed by PLM customers. Without standards, it is infeasible for a new 

vendor to introduce an innovative technology for interoperability across functional needs. 

The data reveals that there is a lack of facilities for interoperability across tools and that 

there are barriers to entry for software developers that could provide a plug and play 

approach to PLM support. Currently only a few IT companies with vertically integrated 

tool sets are able to provide facilities that are even partially integrated. 

This state of support makes it difficult for a number of SMEs to enter the information 

age. A project undertaken by the CMU Software Engineering Institute and NIST on the 

use of Advanced Engineering Environments (AEE)9

 by small manufacturing enterprises 

(SMEs) with commercial off the shelf (COTS) tools identified the benefits that SMEs 

could derive, as well as the potential barriers to their adoption, such as interoperability 

and training expenses [10]. 

Figure 3: Vendor support for Collaborative Product Design - Source:AMR

The above studies and data on coverage and interoperability that is feasible with 

commercial tools point to the problem of not having appropriate standards. Without the 

right standards the SMEs may need several tools to service different customers or use 

services that are external to the organizations to be able to translate the information 

formats needed by the SMEs’ customers [35]. 

Today’s standards, particularly in the area of CAD, have produced direct improvement

in productivity, especially in the manufacturing arena, by reducing transaction costs and 

even more so by increasing the richness of interactions between supplier and customer

[36], [37], [12]. The real cost of the lack of interoperability is difficult to measure and is 

 

9

 Advanced Engineering Environments is a concept similar to PLM support systems put forth by NASA.

The report is based on the adoption of support systems for supporting the technical tasks of CAD, CAE and 

CAM. 

9
often buried in day to day operations of individuals needing the information or needing to 

transmit the information. 

In a previous section, we made the case that the time has come for a systematic approach 

to exploit the positive externalities that are emerging with the rise of the network 

economy. These positive externalities cannot be achieved without providing 

interoperability within industrial sectors to address the costs of interactions that go 

beyond pure transaction costs. Any new regime of interoperability will have to 

accommodate meaningful and semantically rich interactions required to support the full 

range of levels of interaction that has been observed in networked industries. 

6. Areas of need for standards 

To understand the needs of interoperability and gain a better insight into the current 

practices we got the data from Dr. Gahl Berkooz10. The purpose of the study was to 

identify the use of tools and standards and the level of richness of the standards used by 

the five companies characterized in Table 1. 

Company no. Business and location 2003 revenues 

1 US Auto OEM > $50B 

2 European Auto OEM $10B - $50B range 

3 US Tier One Supplier $10B - $50B range 

4 US Aerospace OEM $10B - $50B range 

5 Electronics Manufacturing Services $5B - $10B range 

Table 1: Characterization of companies studied

The data showed that in all these companies, while the use of COTS is dominant for the 

geometry-based representation of products, the use spreadsheets or custom applications 

prevails in the representation of non-geometric information such as functional 

requirements. The findings support the earlier observations that: (a) clearly defined 

syntactic information exchange at the low end of the parts procurement process is well 

supported by off-the shelf systems (COTS); while (b) high complexity leading to large 

volume exchanges are not well supported. In terms of the supplier network interactions 

categorized earlier, the nodes that have been termed contractual and child relationships 

are supported but not the mature and partner level interactions. 

The second major observation of the study is that the companies reviewed often have 

informal and ad hoc information models for defining product requirements, functional

decompositions and behaviors of the product components. Table 2 provides responses 

from the five companies studied on their perception of the financial impacts of standards 

in various aspects of the product life cycle. The industry participants did not indicate an 

insignificant impact in any of the aspects. 

 

10 Dr. Berkooz was the director of the PLM program at D.H.Brown and Company prior to the engagement

with NIST and was an independent consultant at the time of this engagement. 

10
Impact 

Information aspect 

Insignificant Somewhat

significant 

Significant Very 

significant 

Product requirements, 

functions and behavior (non 

geometrical) 

5 1,2 3,4

Geometrical representation 

of product (CAD) 

1,2,3,4,5

Bill of material (BOM) 4 1,2,3,5 

Manufacturing process 4 1,2,3 5 

Build order information / 

order management 

4 1,2,3,5

Change management 1,2,3,4,5

Table 2: Expected financial impact of new standards

(numbers denote the companies considered for the study)

Comparison of US industries with European and Japanese industries 

Beyond the issue of standards, our study also points out that the European and Japanese 

industries are proceeding with the incorporation of information models using internal 

representations for various aspects of the product life cycle to derive economic 

advantages. The comparison provides the following observations: 

• Compared to European industry, US industry is behind in its ability to model product 

function and configure products at the level of modules. 

• Compared to Japanese industry, US industry is behind in its ability to align product 

designs and product information structures with existing manufacturing capabilities. 

By closing the gap with European and Japanese industries in these areas, US 

manufacturers will see considerable cost savings and a marked increase in 

competitiveness across industries. In particular, improvements in information 

management capabilities that accelerate time to market for new technologies and reduce 

production costs will play to both the US industry’s strengths (in terms of having a strong 

core of high technology companies that will benefit from earlier product releases) and 

weaknesses (in terms of the strong cost competition US manufacturers face from

companies in low wage countries). 

The above observations are supported by the work on the development of product 

information models in Europe by the MOKA effort that exploits the STEP, KIF and other 

DARPA-related efforts to create an integrated virtual product model for knowledge based 

engineering [38]. In a separate effort, the Virtual Product Model development from

Germany is a comprehensive effort at developing standards for different aspects of 

product modeling including functional decomposition, product data, design process

information and other aspects of product development [22]. Similar large scale efforts in 

11
the area of process systems engineering can be found in the IMPROVE project at RWTH 

Aachen, where design work process information models are integrated with chemical 

process system design information models [39]. 

The closing of the gap between US and European and Japanese companies can only be

achieved if the US takes an active role in the development of standards for product 

information model so as to allow the American high tech industry (hardware and 

software) to become major providers of the infrastructural components for PLM support 

worldwide [40]. 

7. Towards a typology of standards and their convergence for PLM 

To achieve a PLM support system we need to move from product data exchange to 

product information exchange and eventually to product knowledge exchange. In the near 

future e-marketplaces will exchange design product and process knowledge over the web, 

and to do this we need both syntactic and semantic interoperability of various systems. 

With this overall objective, we have identified the following typology of standards that 

are relevant to PLM support. 

Standards for architectural frameworks 

In order to achieve the PLM objective of full interoperability, it is imperative that the

different types of standards described below are reconciled and made convergent. In 

terms of integrating the types of standards described below, we will have to take into

consideration the architectural frameworks for creating integrated PLM support system

perspectives. Several integration frameworks standards have been proposed, such as the 

Zachman Framework [41] and the Department of Defense Framework (DoDAF) [25]. 

Content standards 

Standards such as STEP are directed toward a particular type of content. In the case of 

STEP the content is the product structure, geometry and part-related information. 

Information models for function, assembly and behavior are critical in the conceptual 

development of a product and its evaluation. The NIST work on a core product model

and its extension to an assembly model may serve as organizing principles for standards 

that may emerge in this area [42], [43], [44], [45], [46]. A similar effort is the ESPRIT 

funded project MOKA (Methodology and tools Oriented to Knowledge-based 

engineering applications) [38]. The MOKA modeling language is based on UML and is

designed to represent engineering design knowledge at a user level for deployment in 

Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) applications. 

A NIST focus area is the standardization of the representation of manufacturing 

processes, called the Process Specification Language (PSL) [47]. Like product data, 

12
process data is used throughout the lifecycle of a product. This effort uses first order logic 

and OWL-like representations for its modeling. 

SysML is an effort directed towards the specific domain of Systems Engineering. SysML 

is derived from the basic UML to cover the requirements, structure, behavior, 

parametrics, and the relation of structure to behavior (allocation) [40]. SysML reuses a 

subset of UML 2.0 diagrams and augments them with some new diagrams and modeling 

constructs appropriate for systems modeling. 

The ManTIS Task Force of the Object Management Group (OMG) addresses Product 

Design, Planning, and Manufacture as well as Industrial Systems used in Manufacturing 

and Process Control purposes [48], [49]. 

Information modeling standards 

The prime examples of information modeling standards are Express, RDF, UML and 

OWL. Industry consortia, standard organizations, and software vendors have come out 

with various standards such as ebXML, BizTalk, cXML, CML (Chemical markup 

language), Bioinformatics Sequence Markup Language (BSML), MathML, MatML, etc., 

which primarily define XML vocabularies in specific domains. 

Ontology standards 

Semantically rich modeling languages, based on different forms of logic, have been 

developed through the W3C consortium and other bodies. These include standards such 

as KIF, DAML, OIL, OWL and RDF that support reasoning over the information 

representing a content domain. All of these efforts are directed towards building formal

ontologies that are expected to aid the process of semantic interoperability. 

The term ontology has been used for a number of years by the AI and knowledge 

representation communities, but is now commonly used by a much wider community 

including the object modeling and XML communities. Gruberdefines ontology as a 

specification of a conceptualization [50]. Sowa defines ontology as a catalog of the types 

of things that are assumed to exist in a domain of interest from the perspective of a 

person who uses a language for the purpose of talking about the domain [51]. Ontology 

can also be defined as the study of concepts and their relationships. The objectives of 

efforts to develop shared foundational ontologies are based on their potential to use them

as the basis for interoperation among trading partners in electronic markets. An ontology 

based approach for achieving interoperability is expected to have potential of enabling 

interoperability at the level of technical and business semantics. To quote Berners-Lee,

"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given 

well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." 

[52]. DARPA has funded a program called the DARPA Agent Markup Language 

(DAML) [53]. The goal of DAML effort is to develop a language and tools to facilitate 

the concept of the semantic web. 

13
Information exchange standards 

Examples of information exchange standards are EDI, XML, SOAP and other specialized 

standards for exchange of data and information. Specialized versions of these standards 

are: STEPml, a library of XML specifications based on the content models from the 

STEP standard [54]; the Product Data Markup Language (PDML) [55] being developed 

as part of the Product Data Interoperability (PDI) project under the sponsorship of the

Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office (JEPCO) [56];11 PLM XML, a set of XML 

schemas serving as a transport protocol; and BPML (Business Process Modeling

Language), a meta-language for the modeling of business processes. Other extensions to 

XML have been in the area of electronic exchange to replace traditional EDI standards 

with ebXML (e-business XML) standards and schemas to support electronic business

transactions

Visualization standards 

Designers have been creating 3D artifacts with CAD applications for more than 25 years, 

creating a large library of data with a vast potential for reuse. One estimate suggest that 

for every 3D CAD user in design, engineering, or manufacturing, there are thirty 

potential users of data in marketing, product documentation, sales, support, customer 

service, and beyond. Through the 3D Industry Forum (3DIF), Intel is working with other 

companies to develop a standard file format to support the efficient reuse of 3D data [57]. 

The Universal 3D (U3D) specification is intended to simplify the transformation of 

complex 3D data into a format that can be streamed, compressed and viewed on 

affordable, nonproprietary software/hardware platforms while providing a high quality 

3D visualization. Similar efforts are: X3D, an Open Standards XML-enabled 3D file 

format to enable real-time communication of 3D data [58] X3D, a powerful and 

extensible open file format standard for 3D visual effects, behavioral modeling and 

interaction; and JT Open, a program supported by UGS and others, to help leverage the 

benefits of open collaboration across the extended enterprise through the adoption of the

JT format12 [59]. 

 

11 JECPO [56] has been re-named the Defense Electronic Business Program Office 12 JT is Engineering Animation Inc’s DirectModel (.jt) file format. EAI is now part of UGS.

14
Product 

Engineering 

Process Engineering eCommerce Enterprise operation 

ERP/SCM CAPP/ MES Internet Auctions CAD/CAE/CAM 

PSL BizTalk,ebXML,BPML,

Figure 4. The relationship between PLM and standards 

Access and exchange rights standards 

The earlier types of standards focused on what is to be represented, how it is to be

represented and how it is to be exchanged. What is missing is how much of the 

information needs to exchanged and with whom. This is important from the point of view 

of information overload, intellectual property rights, and security. DRM (Digital Rights

Management) refers to technologies that have been specifically developed for managing 

digital rights. The XrML - eXtensible rights Markup Language - provides a universal 

method for specifying rights and issuing conditions associated with the use and protection 

of content. Various organizations such as the NIST Information Technology Laboratory 

and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are establishing international 

standards in this area [60]. 

 

How do they all fit together? 

While there has been a rich set of standardization activities deriving from different needs 

and perspectives in the creation of standards for information, it is not clear how all of 

these standards will play a role in the development of a PLM system support for a 

networked organization. Figure 4 provides a vision of how all of the above standards 

potentially fit together for PLM support, without any detailed architectural suggestions. 

The architectual framework standards and information modeling standards are not 

DESIGN ORGANIZATION

DESIGN ORGANIZATION

DETAILED DESIGN

Semantic Layer (OWL/RDF/XML) 

Interface Layer 

(XML/RDF/Java)

DAM

JDBC/ODBC/XS

RosattaNet, STEPml, PDML,

Agents

Content Management 

Security

Digital Rights Management 

Database server

Visualization 

Users Web Services 

Content layer

XrML, ORDL, DRM,

JX3D, U3D,

Current

Future 

DISPOSAL IDEATION

CONCEPTUAL DESIGN 

PRODUCT USE 

MANUFACTURING

DESIGN EVALUATION DETAILED DESIGN 

Design Database Archival Design Repository

PRODUCT USE DISPOSAL IDEATION

DESIGN EVALUATION CONCEPTUAL DESIGN 

15
identifiable in this figure; the various contents standards for the business processes

illustrated in the top row of the figure address the contents layer shown; while the

information exchange standards, visualization standards and access standards are 

identified in the figure. The picture is by no means complete; it only serves to illustrate

the functional roles played by the different standards. However, their integration remains

an open question. Clearly the task of integrating the entire set of standards is beyond the 

capabilities of a single vendor to any given industry. 

We believe we are at the threshold of exploiting the efforts of a large number of 

researchers, practitioners, users and students to continuously integrate their work into the 

larger vision of full PLM support for particular industries. However, the current disparate 

standards with differing assumptions and purposes are not easily reconciled; neither can

they be solved by single entities. The extraction of positive network externalities in the 

networked manufacturing economy can only be achieved by the free flow of ideas and 

the exchange of knowledge in a public or semi-public space to create new innovations in 

the new knowledge economy [61]. We will be left with no choice but to develop a 

pragmatic mechanism for supporting the development of standards in an open 

environment where the participation of all parties concerned will become critical. 

The convergence of standards can only take place in an open environment given the 

complexity of the task ahead. This realization can be seen in the publications of

information technology vendors such as IBM, end users such as DOD and engineering 

consultants making a case for open standards for the information base required to support 

the underlying IT infrastructure to accommodate legacy and changing technologies [24], 

[24], [21; 62], [28]. To encourage this process, the Manufacturing Interoperability

Program of the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory of NIST is focusing on achieving 

convergence among these types of standards. However, more open and wide industrial 

participation that include vendors, end-users and other interested parties including DOD 

and NIST will have to created to address this challenge. Beyond the convergence of the 

types of standards referred to in this paper, other aspects such as traceability, validation, 

verification and other audit functions will have to considered in the support system for

PLM [63]. 

8. Conclusions and recommendations 

In this paper, we provided an overview of the changing design and manufacturing 

landscape in the 21st century that has come about because of the arrival of IT and the 

changing global conditions. Based on this overview and a review of the current state of 

IT for PLM support in the design and manufacturing sector, assisted by a preliminary 

study of some industries, we identify the areas of need for standards, the development of 

an initial typology of standards and an initial sketch for bringing convergence of these 

standards in support of PLM. We make a case throughout the paper that given the nature 

of the task we need to aspire to create open standards with wide participation. It is always 

said that markets are the best determinants of standards and, if history is guide, even 

market forces lead to co-operation among competitors to work towards open standards. 

16
Publications in the popular press lead us to believe that IT vendors are ready for a move 

towards open standards. 

As newly industrializing countries take over a substantial part of manufacturing from 

industrialized countries, the competitive advantage for countries such as the US will 

come from a superior infrastructure that expands the market for US manufacturers and 

their innovative capabilities, overcoming the labor arbitrage current enjoyed by the newly 

industrializing countries. As those countries become more dominant in manufacturing 

and their market size increases, they could determine the standards in this area, thereby

reducing further the ability to exploit competitive advantages of the innovative culture of

US industry. The phenomenon of setting standards can already be observed in the 

telecommunication industry, with China developing its own 3G standards as well as other 

standards. These developments, instead of enlarging the market for US small and 

medium scale industries, will shrink their market, leading to a very expensive industrial 

base that is not sustainable and detrimental to national security. It is in this global context 

that we need to create open standards for exchange of information for different levels of 

intensity of interaction among the different nodes in the networked economy so as to 

allow it to reconfigure itself to changing economic and social conditions. 

Institutions such as NIST are playing an important role in this context, and acts as a 

neutral party in the standards debates and implementations. The growth of the US in the 

last century was aided by the significant role that the National Bureau of Standards

(NBS), the precursor of NIST, has played. The critical role in the new century for NIST

is to be the place of conformance certification of information standards by vendors,

similar to the one being played by NIST in the OASIS consortium for ebXML and the

role it played in the adoption and certification of SQL, the data base query language. This 

role is not new for a standards agency, as it has played this role of certification in the 

world of physical metrology. This role will only grow beyond the manufacturing sector to 

the financial, health care and other sectors where information will play a dominant role. 

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