Collaboration within a large, global, distributed supply chain of design and development partners is seriously hindered by both ineffective implementation of interoperability standards industry- wide and selective capabilities embraced by PLM providers. These two factors prevent the digital continuity needed to set up a Model-Based Enterprise. Future A&D development of civil aircraft, aerospace products, and associated systems will rely on model-based paradigms. A Model-Based Enterprise will require long-term archiving and retrieval of the associated model-based design, more specialized and complex data structures, and management of their meta data. Globally, PLM interoperability standards are identified as key enablers to support the new ways of working, based on the introduction of digital twins that will exist in a digital ecosystem.

This position paper supports the A&D industry by identifying international standards of high business value, recommending their incorporation into PLM systems and integrations, and using them in operation within A&D companies and also with their supply chains. This paper is iterative and will be extended with future editions that support new PLM interoperability capabilities requested by the AD PAG.