About 86% of all product standards used at Boeing are for common commodity parts and materials. The aerospace industry can make an outsized impact on our digital transformation journey by adopting common models for standard parts and materials like fasteners, connectors, bearings, fluid fittings, metals, plastics, lubricants and coatings. Most of the intellectual property for these items is defined by industry standards development organizations. OEMs, commodity sellers, and aftermarket service providers all transform and consume standards content as digital data for catalogs and libraries to support design, manufacturing planning, procurement, quality inspection, and inventory management.

The US Federal Logistics Information System (FLIS) database offers a robust data model for every type of standard commodity used in aerospace product support. That data model is used across the defense logistics systems of all NATO countries and several others. A Digital Standards Alliance (DSA) trade study found that the FLIS model often surpasses the content depth found in typical engineering design or sellers’ catalogs. Details of the DSA trade study on this concept will be shared.

This presentation advocates that the aerospace industry adopts FLIS data models as a common ontology framework for capturing definitions, attributes, and valid values for standard parts and materials. A common data model for these commodities will create a market for standards intellectual property owners to provide universally consumable digital twins directly from the master data. This will eliminate redundant content conversion, thereby reducing costs, time, and quality risks for standards data users.