Digital issue management is a critical enabler for accelerating vehicle development and improving launch readiness in automotive programs characterized by distributed engineering, multi-site manufacturing, and increasing electrical/electronic and software complexity. Existing practices often rely on disconnected tools, spreadsheets, and informal communication that delay prioritization, ownership assignment, root-cause analysis, and maturity-gate decisions. This paper presents a standards-anchored semantic issue data model that integrates issue information from engineering, production, quality, supplier, and aftermarket systems without replacing existing tools. The model is aligned with VDA Maturity Level Assurance, IATF 16949, AIAG APQP/PPAP, ISO 26262, Automotive SPICE, VDA 6.3, and the 8D problem-solving method. It is formalized through an entity-relationship schema and supported by a reference architecture comprising a knowledge graph, data ingestion protocols, and integration middleware. A deterministic conflict-resolution mechanism reconciles inconsistent metadata from source systems and establishes an auditable single source of truth. The framework is evaluated using published automotive benchmarks and evidence from five anonymized commercial vehicle implementations across different business units and timeframes. The results demonstrate consolidation of fragmented issue repositories, reduction of system interfaces, elimination of paper-based quality workflows, improved digital-thread coverage, and faster retrieval of previous resolution knowledge. These outcomes indicate reduced cross-functional reconciliation effort, improved ownership transparency, stronger maturity-gate evidence, and measurable launch-readiness analytics. The model also supports future integration with cross-enterprise data spaces for multi-tier supplier collaboration. The proposed framework provides a replicable approach for transforming issue management from a reactive process into a strategic capability for faster and more transparent vehicle development.