Information gathering in closed-loop PLM systems - Social networks as models for the internet of things?

Abstract

Different recent approaches from the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) or Internet-of-Things (IoT) area describe a product-centric view on data and information which are collected by different stakeholders and systems along the lifecycle in order to enhance retrospective analytics, predictive analytics, business decisions, etc. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the basic principles of information sharing, communication and collaboration in traditional human-centric social networks and discuss whether these can be applied to data and information exchange in the PLM/IoT sector. With respect to the methodology applied to this investigation, recent communication mechanisms in social networks as well as in product-centric IoT platforms are systemized and abstracted. Based on the transformation of social network means for IoT, possible improvements of IoT platforms are discussed, resulting in demonstrations of possible PLM usage. In summery, the paper draws implications about the adoption of valuable Social Network means for product-centric usage.