Our vision in ICT4SM Group includes the development of a Closed Loop Lifecycle Management (CL2M) system based in Industry 4.0 technologies that allow Product Information Tracking and Flow Management. CL2M will allow all actors that play a role during the lifecycle of a product (managers, designers, service and maintenance operators, recyclers, etc.) to track, manage and control product information at any phase of its lifecycle: Beginning of Life (BOL) including design and manufacturing, Middle of Life (MOL) including e- Maintenance and e-Service and End of Life (EOL), at any time and any place in the world. This concept is shown in the figure below sets the requirements for the technologies to be investigated and developed:
The main elements of this concept and requirements, shown in the above figure are:
- Local (short distance) connection mode for product data and information exchange,
- Internet (long distance) product information and knowledge retrieval
- Data and information flows
- Decision support software systems
The above concepts and requirements compose what it could be defined as seamless e-Transformation of Information to Knowledge and allows going towards the realization of the following ambitious objective:
What if a product could tell what to do with itself next?
What could we do with that?