Product Lifecycle Management, especially for large and complex products like automobiles, is ripe for re-invention. Organizations adopt agile techniques and focus on smaller, more focused teams to deliver more competitive and customer-centric solutions at near breakneck speeds. Imagine building a car, for example. Tracking all the parts from vendors around the world would be hard enough. Now, imagine all the silicon and software in a modern car to manage everything from acceleration and breaking to climate controls and music. All that hardware and software have must work in unison, and you need to track all the parts and dependencies in a centralized database.   Unfortunately, or fortunately (depending on how you look at it), there is rarely no centralized database. Most organizations have multiple software products to manage parts, vendors, and software. That is where the Openness certification comes in, and Michael Hertwig is sharing how it works.   Michael's LinkedIn: LinkedIn Link to Certification of Openness article: Article Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering: Fraunhofer