he other root is the management of product information throughout the entire lifecycle of the product [1]. In this context, system integration facilitates the collaboration among virtual enterprises. Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and product data management (PDM) systems [2] play a major role here. CAD systems emerged in the early 1980s and enabled designers to create geometric models of the product more easily than on paper. Such digital designs can be more easily manipulated and reused. With time, the volume of product information created by authoring Computer-Aided Design, Manufacturing and Engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) tools threatened to get out of control. As a result, product data management (PDM) systems appeared in the 1980s