Foreward by Peter Schroer, founder of Aras Innovator PLM

The PLM world is essentially focused on one challenge: How to get very complex engineering data into a format everyone can use to efficiently do their jobs. PLM does the plumbing; it keeps tracks of versions, sends data to the right places, and is great at orchestrating workflows. And it lets you visualize 3D CAD.

But PLM won’t let you take the 10 or 15 other sources of data it houses and rapidly aggregate them into customized slices of intuitive and easy to consume content which meet the unique contextual requirements of all the stakeholders in manufacturing.

This is the goal of the next phase of digital transformation in manufacturing. We must extend the digital thread which has its source in the PLM out to every operational worker who needs it to be successful in their role. It’s time to make all the data that lives in the PLM,which manufacturers have invested billions in creating, organizing, and managing, truly useful at scale.