Digital Continuity
The unbroken availability and accuracy of product data across all lifecycle phases — from design through manufacturing, service, and end-of-life — without data loss, format conversion errors, or manual re-entry.
In context
Airbus maintains digital continuity for A320 aircraft by ensuring that CAD geometry, stress analysis inputs, and manufacturing process data remain accessible and linked even as software platforms change — so a maintenance engineer in 2050 can still trace a repair back to the original design intent. When Airbus migrated from CATIA V4 to V5, a massive data migration program validated that every released drawing maintained its revision history and file associations before the V4 vault was decommissioned.
Why it matters
Digital continuity determines whether product data created in design can actually be used in service, decades later. Without it, manufacturers face costly manual reconstruction of product history whenever a field failure, recall, or regulatory audit demands it.
External References
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Cite this definition
Finocchiaro, Michael. “Digital Continuity.” DemystifyingPLM PLM Glossary, 2026, https://www.demystifyingplm.com/glossary/digital-continuity