Digital thread complexity and key requirements for circularity

This paper aims to define the digital thread through a system model consisting of four interacting subsystems: integration, ontology, storage, and access. These are embedded in lifecycle, marketplace, and regulatory contexts. From this model, five essential requirements are derived: standardized semantics, lifecycle integration, end-to-end traceability, secure and usable access, and scalable infrastructure. This system-level framing offers greater clarity than prior lifecycle or policy-driven views, highlighting the tradeoffs between centralized usability and decentralized trust. A review of contemporary solutions shows that while cloud platforms, APIs, and role-based access are widely implemented, they fall short in areas such as federated identity, cross-organizational policy enforcement and operational usability. The contribution of this work lies in synthesizing requirements from a coherent system definition, thereby guiding the design of resilient digital thread solutions.