Method for data inventory and classification

One of the most notable drivers of the fourth industrial revolution is the availability of vast amounts of data along the entire lifecycle of a product. The analysis of product lifecycle data leads to promising potentials in strategic product planning. However, many companies are confronted with major challenges in identifying and specifying all the relevant heterogeneous and manifold data sources. This is due to the lack of simple approaches and methods for data inventory. In this paper we present a method for identifying and structuring data and their sources systematically by employing a framework to classify data sources and giving examples for application.