Product Lifecycle Information Management Research Articles

A Comprehensive Security Architecture for Information Management throughout the Lifecycle of IoT Products

The Internet of things (IoT) is expected to have an impact on business and the world at large in a way comparable to the Internet itself. An IoT product is a physical product with an associated virtual counterpart connected to the internet with computational as well as communication capabilities. The possibility to collect information from internet-connected products and sensors gives unprecedented possibilities to improve and optimize product use and maintenance. Virtual counterpart and digital twin (DT) concepts have been proposed as a solution for providing the necessary information management throughout the whole product lifecycle, which we here call product lifecycle information management (PLIM). Security in these systems is imperative due to the multiple ways in which opponents can attack the system during the whole lifecycle of an IoT product. To address this need, the current study proposes a security architecture for the IoT, taking into particular consideration the requirements of PLIM. The security architecture has been designed for the Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) and Open Data Format (O-DF) standards for the IoT and product lifecycle management (PLM) but it is also applicable to other IoT and PLIM architectures. The proposed security architecture is capable of hindering unauthorized access to information and restricts access levels based on user roles and permissions. Based on our findings, the proposed security architecture is the first security model for PLIM to integrate and coordinate the IoT ecosystem, by dividing the security approaches into two domains: user client and product domain. The security architecture has been deployed in smart city use cases in three different European cities, Helsinki, Lyon, and Brussels, to validate the security metrics in the proposed approach. Our analysis shows that the proposed security architecture can easily integrate the security requirements of both clients and products providing solutions for them as demonstrated in the implemented use cases.

Efficient management of product lifecycle information through a semantic platform

Products generate a large amount of information during their lifecycle. Small and medium enterprises often lack an efficient management of such an amount of information. Several tools of product lifecycle management have been developed in the last years to address this issue, but they are rarely exploited by companies, especially SMEs. The aim of our work is to present a semantic platform to integrate data along the whole product lifecycle to allow semantic search and knowledge reuse. The integration of data is realised with a reference PLM ontology, containing the main concepts and relations to describe a PLM. This ontology has a modular structure, so that it can be easily extended to describe concrete product lifecycles. An example of a real application of the semantic platform in an industrial case is reported.

Product life cycle information management in the electronics supply chain

Information availability and data transparency are key requirements from manufacturers when supporting products throughout the life cycle, for example, when implementing product service systems. The application of embedded wireless technologies into printed circuit boards can help by bridging current knowledge gaps in order to minimise both technical and financial risk through: reduced product downtime, improved quality of tracking, and enhanced end-of-life decision making. The application of an embedded radio frequency identification device into printed circuit boards for life cycle monitoring of electronic products to support product service systems is discussed in this article.

OntoSTEP: Enriching product model data using ontologies

The representation and management of product lifecycle information is critical to any manufacturing organization. Different modeling languages are used at different lifecycle stages, for example STEP’s EXPRESS may be used at a detailed design stage, while UML may be used for initial design stages. It is necessary to consolidate product information created using these different languages to build a coherent knowledge base. In this paper, we present an approach to enable the translation of STEP schema and its instances to Ontology Web Language (OWL). This gives a model–which we call OntoSTEP–that can easily be integrated with any OWL ontologies to create a semantically rich model. As an example, we combine geometry information represented in STEP with non-geometry information, such as function and behavior, represented using the NIST’s Core Product Model (CPM). A plug-in for Protégé is developed to automate the different steps of the translation. As additional benefits, reasoning, inference procedures, and queries can be performed on enriched legacy CAD models. We describe the rules for the translation from EXPRESS to OWL, and illustrate the benefits of OWL translation with an example. We will also describe how these mapping rules can be implemented through meta-model based transformations, which can be used to map other languages to OWL.

Research on Home Appliance Lifecycle Information Management System Based on RFID

There are two main aspects of problems in home appliance product lifecycle information management. One is the loss of information and unable to share information in time. The other is the existing bar code and other information recording methods are easy to wear or deface, resulting in low efficiency in information collection and high error rate, even cannot be read. This paper established a home appliance product lifecycle information management system based on RFID. RFID is used to collect and store data. Under such information sharing circumstance, not only integrity and instantaneity of product information are improved, but also the information management of home appliance product lifecycle is strengthened.

Product Family Lifecycle Information Integration Model and its Application

To solve the difficulties in managing lifecycle information on varieties of products in the customer demand diversity and personalization environment, a product lifecycle information management approach based on product family is put forward. A 3-Dimention Product Family Lifecycle Information Integration Model (PFLI2M) is proposed, which is composed of product main structure dimension, product dimension and lifecycle dimension, and the evolution process of the 3 dimensions is discussed. Based on the metadata method, unit information representation of PFLI2M is studied from the physical layer, logic layer, expression layer and the application layer. These methods are applied in lifecycle information management of sealing products.

Lightweight product lifecycle information management for small enterprises

In an increasingly competitive and global market, small enterprises can benefit just as much from product lifecycle management (PLM) as larger enterprises. However, the software currently available to support PLM is aimed at larger enterprises and does not entirely suit the more flexible business processes and heterogeneous systems environment of smaller enterprises. We argue that some of the most important benefits of PLM may be achieved by small enterprises using the combination of a full-featured CAD system with lightweight visualisation formats and a system of overlaid annotations that may be applied to a model regardless of its format. We outline a proof-of-concept implementation of these ideas and indicate where further work is needed.

RFID in product lifecycle management: a case in the automotive industry

The circumstances of globalization and ever-stricter environmental legislation over the past decade have led enterprises to work together to transform products into extended products, and to manage these throughout their lifecycle. Innovative radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can be introduced as an enabler of product lifecycle management (PLM) business, by enhancing the traceability of the product throughout its value chain via automatic identification, enabling the collection of product usage information during its middle-of-life (MOL) phase, and facilitating the integration of product lifecycle information and knowledge across the value chain, thus closing the product's information loop from beginning-of-life (BOL), through MOL, to end-of-life (EOL) and back again. This paper will introduce a framework for product lifecycle information management with the support of RFID technology. A case study of how the framework supports the decision-making involved in the different lifecycle phases of the automotive industry will be described using UML models.

A Component-based Software Framework for Product Lifecycle Information Management for Consumer Products

In this paper, a component-based software framework that can facilitate the development of lifecycle information management systems for consumer products is developed. This software framework can accommodate the management of lifecycle data at all stages, especially data that occur in distribution, usage, maintenance and end-of life stages, and use them to provide information and knowledge. The software framework is built with software components, based on a component-based concept with reference to a product lifecycle information acquisition and management model proposed within this research study. Two actual lifecycle information management systems are created using the Framework in field trials. This software framework can open new horizons for product design which are sustainable and environmentally sensitive. It also contributes to the wider exploration of middleware solutions for implementing next generation consumer products (e.g. smart home appliances) and intelligent products.