Persistent IDs: The Missing Prerequisite for AI in Manufacturing
Manufacturing is becoming increasingly digital, automated, and data-driven. Yet one fundamental challenge still limits progress: the inability to reliably connect data across the product lifecycle.
Persistent IDs and operational feature IDs address exactly this — and their impact reaches well beyond automation and traceability. By giving every feature a stable, machine-readable identity, they become an enabler for entirely new use cases in AI. Feature-level data can be organized semantically rather than trapped in files, making it far easier to store, query, and reason over. In that sense, this program is almost a necessary evolution: the next generation of AI in manufacturing depends on data that is connected, consistent, and identifiable — and the same identifiers that connect design to inspection inside a factory also connect the wider supply chain, so partners and suppliers work from the same references end to end.