Code of PLM Openness

since 2012

The CPO is an open initiative of the prostep ivip Association and is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWK). The specifications and certification measures are aimed at establishing openness and thus ensuring the easy integration of IT applications in networked environments (e.g. corporate networks, IoT). The CPO allows technical IT requirements to be linked with those of the users. It provides a standard catalog of measurable criteria (“mandatory“, “desired“ and “optional“) for the categories interoperability, infrastructures, extensibility, interfaces, standards, architectures and partner relationships.

In 2021, focus was placed on preliminary work for making measurable criteria (KPI) relating to the openness of software products available. The aim was to develop criteria that make it possible to measure the extent to which concepts relating to aspects such as “freedom of choice“, “integration“, “collaboration“ and “application of information/data“ have been implemented.

The results and the industrial application of the CPO were presented to the public within the framework of prostep ivip webinars. An initiative to persuade ECAD vendors and enterprise architects to help shape the CPO was also launched.

All documents – the CPO, the certification program and a mapping between the CPO and the certification criteria – are published as the DIN SPEC 91372 series.

The objective for 2022 is to move product certification forward and create a framework for an initial product certification program. The plans for 2022 also include a CPO Community Day that will aim to present the CPO and the issue of the openness of IT solutions to as large an audience as possible and create a link to the CATENA-X initiative.

In addition, the CPO project group has set itself the goal of recruiting additional members from the field of ECAD and enterprise architects for the group, and in particular for the core team, in order to expand the project scope to include new domains. It is also intended that the collaboration with the SSB (Standardization Strategy Board) launched in 2021 be stepped up.