Exploiting Product and Service Lifecycle Data

Abstract

The product lifecycle comprises the product design, digital factory and service sub lifecycles. The outcome of the product design lifecycle is the translation of the product idea and associated requirements into a digital design model of the envisioned product. The digital factory lifecycle encompasses testing and optimizing production processes in order to reduce the time from product idea to a finished product and to digitally simulate and improve the factory processes before their actual deployment. The service lifecycle includes all activities of operating the product, often offered as Product Service Systems (PSS) that provide products together with bundled services. Unfortunately, data captured during the service sub lifecycle like sensor generated and human knowledge data is isolated and not fed back into the product and factory design sub lifecycles. In order to integrate these sub lifecycles, we analyze data flows between the sub lifecycles and identify typical usage scenarios for real-time exploitation of authentic service data which lead to an overall improvement of the product lifecycle. Finally, we discuss implied challenges to preservation and real-time exploitation of integrated product and service lifecycle data.