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The LOTAR International Project (Long-Term Archiving and Retrieval) is a global industry initiative dedicated to developing standardized methods for preserving and retrieving digital product and technical information over the long term. Jointly hosted by AIA and PDES, Inc. in the US, as well as ASD-STAN and prostep ivip in Europe, LOTAR enables companies to archive engineering, manufacturing, and product lifecycle data in neutral formats that remain accessible and reusable despite future changes in software platforms and information technologies. Its standards ensure the long-term availability, authenticity, and interoperability of critical digital product data throughout the lifecycle of complex products.

Over the past four months, the LOTAR community has achieved a significant milestone with the publication of several new and updated parts of the EN/NAS 9300 Series. These publications expand the industry’s guidance for long-term preservation of digital engineering data and reflect the growing scope of digital transformation across product lifecycle management, model-based engineering, and systems engineering disciplines.

Newly Published Standards

• EN/NAS 9300-002 – Requirements for Long-Term Archiving and Retrieval of Digital Product Information
  This foundational document defines the business, legal, regulatory, and technical requirements for preserving digital product data over extended periods. It establishes the principles and processes needed to ensure that archived information remains accessible, understandable, and usable throughout a product’s lifecycle.
• EN/NAS 9300-110 – CAD 3D Explicit Geometry Preservation
  Part 110 specifies requirements for the long-term preservation of 3D explicit geometry for individual CAD parts. The updated standard defines the essential information, validation methods, verification rules, and quality checks required to preserve geometry accurately and enable reliable retrieval in the future.
• EN/NAS 9300-205 – Product Structure Validation
  This new document addresses validation of archived product structures within Product Data Management (PDM) environments. It introduces methods for uniquely identifying product structure elements and validating archived structures through attribute- and relationship-based verification techniques, helping ensure data integrity and reusability.
• EN/NAS 9300-500 – Fundamentals and Concepts for Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Archiving
  Part 500 provides the foundation for archiving MBSE data represented as digital models. As the first document published in this domain, it covers a broad range of systems engineering artifacts, including requirements models, functional and logical architectures, simulations, verification and validation models, and system trade studies. The standard establishes the concepts needed to preserve complex model-based engineering information for future access and reuse.

The published documents can be obtained via ASD-STAN or AIA.

Why These Publications Matter

As aerospace, defense, and other advanced industries continue their transition toward model-based engineering and fully digital product development, preserving engineering knowledge becomes increasingly critical.

For PDES, Inc. member organizations, these new EN/NAS 9300 publications strengthen the standards foundation needed to support the Digital Enterprise. They provide practical guidance for preserving and validating digital engineering information, helping organizations maintain interoperability, reduce the risks of technology obsolescence, and ensure that critical product data remains accessible and reusable over the long term.

By advancing internationally harmonized approaches to long-term archiving, these standards directly support the PDES, Inc. mission of enabling enterprise integration, lifecycle interoperability, and standards-based product data exchange across industry, government, academia, and software communities.

What is Coming Next

The LOTAR team continues its work on new and updated documents within the EN/NAS 9300 series standard. In addition to revised versions of Part 005 (Authentication and Verification) and Part 200 (Fundamentals & Concepts for Long-Term Archiving of PLM Information), first releases of the new Parts 021 (Meta Data for Archive Packages), 230 (“As Delivered/As Maintained” Product Structure) and 300 (Fundamentals and Concepts for Long-Term Archiving of Composite Material Definitions) are planned over the next few months.

As we celebrate Labor Day, PDES, Inc. recognizes the contributions of American workers whose skill, dedication, and ingenuity have helped build our nation and keep its industries moving forward.

The American workforce and tools have changed dramatically over the generations. Manufacturing has evolved from largely manual processes to highly connected, digital environments in which people, machines, software, and data work together.

Yet one thing has remained constant: people are at the heart of progress.

When product information moves reliably from design to manufacturing, inspection, and beyond, workers spend less time dealing with incompatible data, searching for missing information, or correcting errors created earlier in the process. Standards such as ISO 10303 (STEP) help remove barriers to the exchange of product information and enable manufacturers to improve quality and productivity while reducing costs and time-to-market.

This matters because reducing rework allows the workforce to focus on what people do best: thinking, creating, solving problems, and innovating.

For more than three decades, PDES, Inc. has been part of the standards community working to make it easier for people and organizations to create, manufacture, inspect, maintain, and improve products.

This Labor Day, PDES, Inc. honors the American workforce and the generations of workers whose skill, perseverance, and innovation continue to move our nation forward.

Happy Labor Day from PDES, Inc.!

How can a true digital thread be achieved across design, manufacturing, inspection, and lifecycle support? PDES, Inc.’s Persistent ID (PID) Project is addressing this issue by advancing STEP AP242 as the authoritative carrier of Persistent IDs in enabling seamless traceability across engineering domains. A robust digital thread requires that every feature, tolerance, datum, and operational element introduced in design retain its identity as it moves through manufacturing, inspection, and in-service support. When that identity survives every translation and round-trip, organizations gain faster time-to-market, less rework on the production floor, and the ability to perform forensic analysis when in-service failures occur.

The PID Project is working closely with the CAx Interoperability Forum (CAx-IF) to test and deploy PIDs. Successive rounds of joint testing have steadily matured this capability, with vendor implementations improving over time. Bidirectional traceability between STEP and Quality Information Framework (QIF) is now demonstrated for the first time.

These findings are published in “Sewing the Digital Thread Together via Standards” in the prostep ivip ProductData Journal. Read the full article to see how standards-based interoperability is helping connect the digital thread and deliver measurable business value across industries.

About PDES, Inc.: An industry consortium dedicated to advancing the Digital Enterprise through the development, implementation, and testing of product data standards and best practices, PDES, Inc. works with manufacturers, software vendors, government agencies, and academia to improve interoperability across the product lifecycle.

About CAx-IF: A collaborative testing forum jointly hosted by PDES, Inc., AFNeT, and the prostep ivip association since 1999, the CAx Interoperability Forum (CAx-IF) is dedicated to advancing the quality of STEP translators and decreasing their time-to-market across design, manufacturing, and inspection domains.