A product information modeling framework for product lifecycle management

The framework is intended to: (1) capture product, design rationale, assembly, and tolerance information from the earliest conceptual design stage-where designers deal with the function and performance of products-to the full lifecycle; (2) facilitate the semantic interoperability of next-generation CAD/CAE/CAM systems; and (3) capture the evolution of products and product families. The relevance of our framework to PLM systems is that any data component in the framework can be accessed directly by a PLM system, providing fine-grained access to the product's description and design rationale.