PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is a set of capabilities that enable an enterprise to manage its products and services throughout the business lifecycle. A major trend in the present global market is the increasing need for cooperation among enterprises, which organizations can increase flexibility and reduce operational costs by focusing on its core competencies. However, enterprise applications need to be interoperable in order to achieve seamless interaction across organizations, leading to the need for adoption of data standards. This contribution to the chapter proposes a framework to support PLM, enhancing the interoperability in networked environments, and assisting the integration of reference models described following dissimilar methodologies. This framework assists in the automatic mapping between ISO10303 STEP, UML and XML models. The proposed work results from research developed and validated in the scope of the IMS SMART-fm project (www.smart-fm.funstep.org, www.ims.org), involving partners from USA, Europe, Canada and Australia, using emerging approaches for modelling and technology.
