Mechanical product data exchange and integration for PLM

In the present work, we deal with the problem of data exchange and integration in a PLM (product lifecycle management) vision. That is, how to integrate and exchange product data throughout the entire product lifecycle, ranging from design, to operation and destruction. This paper presents two approaches studied in the context of mechanical products: the meta-data approach to show how data exchange is performed in a way that guaranties best interoperability, and the features approach to illustrate a good mechanism for data integration. The study is mainly based on some examples of activities (or phases) taken from the product development lifecycle: including the entire set of activities is out of the scope of this paper, nevertheless, the proposed approaches show enough flexibility and potential to be generalized quite easily to other phases.