Over the last couple of days I have been reading articles about pro’s and con’s in growing a PLM company through mergers and acquisitions. M&A activities many times target the capabilities of PLM vendors to deliver Digital Transformation with Digital Twin and Digital Thread. Some voices in the discussion mention the hard work post M&A to actually reach the integration desired and the promised synergy effects. The integration looks easy with rebranding software but the devil is as always in the details.
More than 10 years ago, PLCS/STEP AP 239 version 1 was approved. Have a look at the picture to see the business problem PLCS Inc set out to solve. It was not called the Digital Thread then. It did not start with the issue of integrating different SW applications, it was about users defining an information model standard for through life product/system management. They did this based on experience and looking at future needs without being constrained that the world (by some) has been divided into ERP, PLM, MRO etc. Even though it was driven from needs in aerospace and defence it has turned out to be highly relevant also to automotive, machinery, AEC, plants and to support the Circular Economy.
By designing an application such as ShareAspace on the PLCS standard, the Digital Thread integrated information model is there as default. Check out a short paper here if you have time, to read about how well PLCS supports the Digital Thread and Twin.
