iiRDS ProductLifeCyclePhase: linking content to the phases of a product's life

Example

A manufacturer of industrial compressors publishes one iiRDS package per model. The topic "Anchoring the compressor to the floor" relates to iirds:Installation, "Starting the compressor" to iirds:Operation, "Replacing the air filter" to iirds:Maintenance, and "Draining oil before scrapping" to iirds:Disposal. A customer's service portal groups the content by phase: the installer sees the setup topics first, the operator the daily tasks, and the maintenance planner the service tasks. The same topics also carry the content status iirds:Released, which is a separate statement about the content, not the compressor.

How it applies

Technical documentation

Manuals are traditionally structured by phase: transport, installation, operation, maintenance, disposal. Linking each topic to a lifecycle phase makes that structure explicit in the metadata, so it survives when topics are reused outside the manual's chapter order. Tag the phase the content serves, not every phase it mentions.

Migration

In PDF manuals, the phase is implied by the chapter; converting chapters to topics is the moment to record it. From DITA, a subject scheme map with phase values or chapter-level classification can be mapped to the iiRDS instances. Earlier iiRDS versions already defined lifecycle phases; check custom values against the current core and domain lists before keeping them.

MedTech

For medical devices, phases such as installation, operation, maintenance and disposal each carry their own instructions and safety information. Phase metadata lets a portal show the reprocessing or maintenance content a technician needs without mixing in clinical operating steps. It organizes content; it does not establish that the documentation meets any regulatory requirement.

AI and retrieval

A question like "how do I replace the filter?" belongs to maintenance, not operation. Filtering retrieval by lifecycle phase, together with product variant, narrows the candidate passages and reduces answers that mix setup steps with service steps.

ProductLifeCyclePhase vs. ContentLifeCycleStatus vs. lifecycle state

	iirds:ProductLifeCyclePhase	iirds:ContentLifeCycleStatus	Lifecycle state
Describes	The product's life	The content's editorial process	A system or artifact's governed status
Example values	Installation, Maintenance, Disposal	InReview, Approved, Released	draft, validated, retired
Metadata group	Product metadata	Administrative metadata	Not an iiRDS class
Linked with	iirds:relates-to-product-lifecycle-phase	iirds:has-content-lifecycle-status	—

A maintenance topic can be in review: the phase says what it is about, the ContentLifeCycleStatus says whether it may be delivered.

In RDF

A topic linked to a core phase and to a Machinery domain phase. Shown in Turtle for readability; inside a package, metadata.rdf is written in RDF/XML.

@prefix iirds: <http://iirds.tekom.de/iirds#> .
@prefix iirdsMach: <http://iirds.tekom.de/iirds/domain/machinery#> .

<https://example.com/iirds/replace-air-filter> a iirds:Topic ;
    iirds:title "Replacing the air filter"@en ;
    iirds:has-topic-type iirds:GenericTask ;
    iirds:relates-to-product-lifecycle-phase iirds:Maintenance .

<https://example.com/iirds/first-start> a iirds:Topic ;
    iirds:title "Starting the compressor for the first time"@en ;
    iirds:relates-to-product-lifecycle-phase iirdsMach:Commissioning .

In topic-based authoring and modular architectures

In topic-based authoring, the lifecycle phase is a property of the topic, not of its position in a map or manual. A troubleshooting topic can then appear in both an operator guide and a service manual while keeping one phase statement. In modular delivery architectures, phases act as a shared navigation axis: every consumer, from a service portal to an AI assistant, can offer "by phase" views over content from several suppliers, because the standard values have the same IRIs everywhere. Combine phase with audience and product variant for precise targeting.