Maintenance is crucial for future manufacturing systems. An extended local knowledge is essential to increase precision and efficiency, but also for improvements of the maintained object itself. Approaches exist that closes the loop from end-user to vendor, but intra loops are not so well developed.

This article discusses ways to interconnect and manage data and knowledge flow between work processes in user and vendor life-cycles. It aims to inspire improvements in existing approaches, closer connections between producer and customer, between users, and improved quality of maintenance work via factory-, company-, or group-wide data and knowledge about similar types of equipment.