In developing large or complex systems, it is critical to maintain relationships among data across all the different phases of the product lifecycle. The concept of a digital thread connecting product related information is very promising and enabled by Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 initiatives, but faces the difficulty of heterogeneous data formats, storage and tools. Traceability is the ability to navigate between artifacts of the digital thread along the product/system evolution, from early engineering design to manufacturing, operations and end of life. In this context, through a conceptual study we identified a particular challenge during operations due to limited linkage of operation manuals to engineering data. While there already exist approaches for traceability in manufacturing, this work identifies the need for improved traceability in industrial operations. Similarly, at the transition from operations to end-of-life, the traceability is analyzed, and an approach is presented and discussed. Our study shows that the digital thread is not a single continuous line though the lifecycle, because industrial operations are given limited access to information of engineering and almost none from manufacturing. These limitations on traceability are mainly caused by organizational boundaries.