Semantic Web Service Wrappers as a foundation for interoperability in closed-loop Product Lifecycle Management

Closed-loop PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is an approach to facilitating closing information loops between the individual phases and processes of the product lifecycle. These systems are heterogeneous, decentral and distributed throughout the network and over multiple lifecycle stakeholders. Stakeholders, and thus IT systems, may enter or leave the value chain of the product lifecycle. This means, many different applications, tools and corresponding data formats and standards are required to be integrated in a dynamic way, creating challenging data integration problems. The pervasive availability of relevant product information throughout the lifecycle for all stakeholders is required for the realisation of an efficient closed-loop PLM. Consequently, interoperability between the different IT systems is key to closed-loop PLM. Current interoperability approaches have several drawbacks in this regard. This paper focuses on the design and delivery of semantic interoperability services to meet the requirements of closed-loop PLM. The objective is to establish a general and highly flexible information exchange between different stakeholders. For this purpose, an overview over different approaches to interoperability, including Web Services, is given. Then, interoperability problems in closed-loop PLM are discussed. Subsequently, the paper details how these syntactical and semantic integration problems are currently addressed by Web Services. To resolve the hitherto unsolved problems, an extension of Web Service technology called Web Service Wrappers is proposed. Finally, the benefits of the extension are presented on basis of an exemplary closed-loop PLM use case. The exemplary use case addresses the information flow between the test process of an aircraft and its maintenance activities, bridging the gap between beginning-of-life and middle-of-life phases of the product lifecycle. A critical examination of the research results and an outlook towards future work conclude the paper.