The evolving digital factory – new chances for a consistent information flow

Abstract Within product development process data and information management is an essential task. Data and information are generated at every stage of this process and stored in software tools used to generate that data. For large scale manufacturing systems this leads to manual work, which is error-prone. This issue intensifies due to increasing influence of computer science on those systems (e.g. Industrie 4.0), leading to a rise of complexity. New approaches are needed for a better information flow. This contribution introduces an approach of an evolving Digital Factory containing and visualizing all generated information based on an open standard meta model.