2025 North America agenda

• Registration & Continental Breakfast in the Collaboration Café
• Welcome
  Peter Bilello, President & CEO, CIMdata & Håkan Kårdén, Strategic Advisor, HKAB
• Opening Presentation: PLM’s Integral Role in Digital Transformation
  Peter Bilello, President & CEO, CIMdata
  As PLM professionals, we must understand and promote that PLM is a strategic business approach powered by a consistent set of solutions that support the collaborative creation, use, management, and dissemination of product-related intellectual assets. When enabled and executed correctly, a PLM strategy maximizes return on investment by ensuring the right products reach the right markets each and every time. This presentation will explore how digitalizing the entire product lifecycle—from concept through end-of-life—is at the core of an organization’s digital transformation, and why it requires rethinking many organizational structures and business processes. It will emphasize why PLM needs to be well understood and incorporated into a company’s digital transformation initiative, as well as the critical role it plays. Additionally, a brief review of CIMdata’s Critical Dozen—key trends and enablers for a successful digital transformation and their required PLM enablement will be presented.
• KEYNOTE: Reflecting on 40 Years of PDM/PLM: Are We Where We Wanted to Be?
  Professor Martin Eigner, Founder, EIGNER Engineering Consult
  Professor Eigner, who pioneered the first PDM/PLM system 40 years ago, will take an honest look at the current state of our industry. In the 1990s, it was boldly asserted that PLM was not just a system but a philosophy—a way to harmonize and manage engineering data and processes throughout the product lifecycle. Fast forward to today and Professor Eigner’s frustration in the fragmented landscape of PLM solutions. According to Professor Eigner, we are still tied to legacy systems (ERP, MES, SCM, CRM) that depend on flawed interfaces reminiscent of outdated monolithic software. As digitalization demands and technologies like IoT, AI, knowledge graphs, and cloud solutions continue to grow, are we truly harnessing their full potential to sustainably optimize products and processes through PLM? The key question: Can the next generation of PLM solutions meet the challenges of digital transformation with the advanced, modern software technologies available? Professor Eigner’s keynote presentation will explore where we have come from and where we need to go.
• Unlocking Business Growth Through Digital PLM & Digital Thread Transformation
  Caroline Gustafsson, Manager Digital Global Center of Competence, Hitachi Energy
  Power grid integration businesses must accelerate innovation amid rapid energy transition while maintaining operational efficiency and regulatory compliance. Despite strong market demand and a robust pipeline, fragmented processes, data silos, disjointed technology platforms, and manual inefficiencies slow the ability to fully capitalize on growth opportunities. To address these challenges, Hitachi Energy is embarking on a strategic Digital Business Transformation by implementing Digital PLM and Digital Thread across the value chain. This transformation breaks down data silos, streamline workflows, and enable seamless collaboration across product management, engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, quality & regulatory, and service operations. Establishing a connected digital enterprise reduces time-to-market, enhances product quality, improves compliance, and drives revenue growth. This presentation will share Hitachi Energy’s transformation journey, key strategies, challenges, lessons learned, and expected business outcomes, demonstrating how Digital PLM and Digital Thread are shaping the future of power grid integration.
• AD PAG Digital Twin/Digital Thread Benchmark
  Dr. Robert Rencher, Senior Systems Engineer, Associate Technical Fellow, The Boeing Company (speaking on behalf of the A&D PLM Action Group)
  The PLM AG Digital Twin and Digital Thread benchmark study is a broad assessment of the capabilities of commercially available digital twin/digital thread solution offerings by PLM solution providers and PLM solution integrators. The key objectives of the study were to mutually educate and align thought leaders from industry and leading solution providers on digital twin/digital thread use cases and solution strategies to advance the industry’s awareness and understanding of the current practical value potential of digital twin/digital thread investments. Several major industry organizations, including the AD PAG, AIAA, Object Management Group Digital Twin Consortium, ProStep IVIP, and SAE International, developed a set of use cases and engaged with seven digital thread and digital twin solution providers to test and evaluate their implementation and performance. This presentation will summarize the early findings from the benchmark study.
• The History of Geometry Standards Development and Adoption
  Kenny Swope, Senior Manager – Enterprise Interoperability Standards & Supply Chain Collaboration, The Boeing Company
  Abstract to come.
• Enforcing Data Quality to Support Sustainability and Future AI Automation
  Jennifer Weller, Senior Manager Enterprise Systems, TE Connectivity
  Data is often not viewed as a strategic asset in the current landscape, leading to fragmented, incomplete, and disconnected information. This fragmentation limits our potential to automate and optimize processes, slows our response to regulatory changes, and impacts the benefits of AI. Given the rapidly changing regulatory requirements, AI’s reliance on data and value creation, and the need to meet customer sustainability expectations, it is crucial to address these data challenges. Our future state envisions a connected data strategy through Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), automated data quality assurance, consistent data access methods, and clear KPIs tracking data availability and quality. To achieve this, TE has initiated a project to improve data quality by enforcing solid PLM practices. This project is structured into two workstreams: creating a Golden Product Record and validating key data elements. We aim to transform our data into a strategic asset supporting sustainability efforts and future AI automation by addressing these issues. This presentation will share more about TE’s journey and current state.
• How do we Drive Through-Life Product Performance: It’s not AI, Digital Twins or Toolsets
  Craig Spacey, Group Support & Services Director, BAE Systems 
  How often have we heard that AI is the answer? Or that we should create a digital twin? Or that a new toolset can solve everything if only we would buy it?! BAE Systems’ Craig Spacey believes none of these alone is the solution. Instead, he advocates for effective collaboration on foundational data architectures—rooted in a product’s definition—to enable more effective adoption of technologies through-life. Why? The complexity of stakeholder environments, increasing commercialisation of technology, and limited skills have led to incoherent product strategies. How? By shifting focus from transient applications to lifecycle-centric architectures, organizations can better align data requirements, maintain consistent configuration management, and streamline collaboration with customers and suppliers. This presentation will share practical insights on architecting a future-proof data strategy that remains viable as technologies evolve, ensuring a cohesive, long-term approach to design, development, and in-service support.
• Building a Best-in-Class Enterprise PLM Platform
  Michael Carlton, Director, Digital Technology PLM Growth, GE Aerospace
  This presentation explores developing a best-in-class Enterprise PLM platform to increase productivity and capacity amid rising demands for digital thread capabilities, technology transformation, automation, and AI. It will cover PLM strategy elements, emphasizing timely data delivery, rapid response to business needs, and the development of strategic MBE capabilities. Key solutions include leveraging AI, cloud acceleration, observability, analytics, and automation techniques.

• Summary Conference Adjourns for the Day

• Happy Hour – avoid the traffic and join us for drinks and snacks in the Collaboration Café

Day 2 – 8 May

Registration & Continental Breakfast in the Collaboration Café

• Welcome
  Peter Bilello, President & CEO, CIMdata & Håkan Kårdén, Strategic Advisor, HKAB
• PLM in the Board Room. What’s Holding it Back?
  John Snow, Research Director, Product Innovation Strategies, IDC
  “Cost, time, and quality (CTQ), you can only pick two“ is an adage often used by product managers. If this is true, and if each of those metrics is weighted equally, then the success of your next product rollout has a good chance of scoring about 67%. Imagine your CEO sharing that as the performance of your next product launch. To help solve CTQ optimization, manufacturers are looking to engineering technologies, but PLM needs to be the basis for delivering products that delight the board. If PLM can move the needle on corporate metrics, and provide insights for C-suite problems, engineering may reclaim the limelight. This presentation shares research that encourages manufacturers to look holistically at the unique challenges of product development. Engineering is uniquely positioned to “own” the problems that go beyond mechanical-electrical-software engineering by also considering manufacturing, supply chains, service, and support. It will also examine the role of AI as we look toward a future of faster development cycles and more critical customers.
• Transforming Product Development with AI
  Dr. Henrik Weimer, Director of Digital Engineering, Airbus
  Artificial Intelligence (AI) could revolutionize aerospace system engineering, boosting efficiency, cutting costs, and improving product quality across the entire product lifecycle. This presentation will explore how AI technologies can transform traditional engineering practices, from requirements capture to in-service support. Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI capabilities can augment engineering workflows in previously unimaginable ways. This presentation will highlight specific use cases, such as automated requirements analysis, design space exploration, AI-assisted architecture trade studies, and design optimization. AI technologies can help identify requirements inconsistencies, suggest architectural alternatives, and accelerate decision-making. AI can support development and testing, including automated test case generation and intelligent defect detection. And AI is already transforming in-service support through AI-powered diagnostic systems and predictive maintenance algorithms. Implementation challenges, including regulatory hurdles and data governance, will also be addressed.
• Digital Threads and Digital Twins – How to Work with Partners When Your Worlds Don’t Look the Same
  Christopher Hinds, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Rolls-Royce PLC
  The pace of change in delivering products is becoming faster and involves more collaboration between organizations than in previous generations of product development. We seek to build more virtually before building for real, which means exchanging data before exchanging physical objects. How do we ensure we can achieve those virtual goals securely while protecting each organization’s intellectual property and competitive advantage? We must be able to bring people, processes, and technology together to deliver a successful outcome, but how do we achieve that when the world inside one company and the world inside another look completely different? This topic becomes increasingly more complex as we seek to build virtual products and reuse data without betraying the confidences bound in commercial agreements. So how could we do something different that enables us to achieve our goals whilst ensuring every company can succeed? In this presentation, you will learn about one approach, what you need to consider to be successful, and some of the challenges that exist along the way.
• From Vision to Reality: The Role of Executive Sponsorship in PLM Success at Hollister
  Stacey Burgardt, Senior Program Manager – PLM, Hollister Incorporated
  In this presentation, Hollister Incorporated’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) business leader will share insights into the critical importance of executive sponsorship in driving a successful PLM initiative. Drawing from Hollister’s PLM history and experience, we will hear about the challenges faced and strategies employed to secure executive buy-in for investing in PLM. This journey, marked by persistence, strategic communication, and alignment with organizational goals, highlights the transformative impact of strong executive support on the adoption and success of PLM projects and systems.
• Presentation title to come
  Captain Andy Biehn RDML (SEL), United States Navy
  Abstract to come.
• Presentation title to come
  Robert Lamanna, Director, Model-Based Enterprise, PEO IWS, ePLM IDE Program Manager, Naval Surface Warfare Center – Port Hueneme Division
  Abstract to come.
• The Current Reality and Future Trends in Model-Based Systems Engineering – Insights from Industry Research
  James Roche, Aerospace & Defense Practice Director, CIMdata (speaking on behalf of the A&D PLM Action Group)
  The value landscape for model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is expanding and shifting. To plan effectively, organizations must understand the current state enablers and barriers, as well as future investment opportunities and drivers, which include strategies and policies from government agencies, competitive pressures, and global dislocations. These opportunities are enabled by new technologies and advanced protocols for collaboration and interoperability. What is the true nature and value potential of these opportunities, and what are the business implications of these drivers? And what are the critical prerequisites to ensure success as we map an organization’s journey? In this presentation, CIMdata will share the findings from recent research on behalf of the Aerospace & Defense PLM Action Group (AD PAG) and six PLM solution providers. The main objective was to understand the needs, opportunities, drivers, and constraints that guide investments in MBSE solution development and industry implementation.
• Requirements Traceability to Enable Mission Readiness
  Simon Pettersson, Director Defence Industry, Eurostep AB
  Achieving a coherent and unified view of a product’s definition throughout its entire lifecycle can be challenging, particularly for complex products with long lifespans and numerous stakeholders involved over time. To leverage the full potential of the product data, it must be integrated not only across disciplines throughout the lifecycle but also in an extended enterprise setting. This presentation will explore how to continuously use product data to drive cost models, ultimately influencing availability and mission readiness. Strategies for maintaining, gathering, and securing accurate data, ensuring robust requirements traceability and enabling deeper insights to support well-informed decisions will be discussed. This presentation will illustrate how coherent data practices supported by international standards provide enhanced availability, reduce risk, and align business outcomes with mission-critical goals across industries.
• Transforming from a Data Driven to a Knowledge Driven Organization with PLM Focused Processes
  Ken Rasche, Principal Engineer-Simulation and Knowledge Management, FLANDERS Incorporated
  FLANDERS Incorporated is transforming from a family-run business to a growing corporation with expanded products, services and growth. A part of the strategy to accomplish this is to evolve from a data-driven organization to a knowledge-driven organization. The goal of this evolution is for the organization to never have to learn the same thing more than once. This is an unachievable goal but is the right one to strive for. FLANDERS is leveraging existing tools (knowledge management, “live documents”, collaboration, etc.) to optimize and realize the benefits of the powerful combination of Knowledge Management and PLM.
• Executive Spotlight: The Role of Executive Sponsor in Driving a PLM Transformation Moderated by Peter Bilello, President & CEO, CIMdata
  Executive sponsorship has long been cited as an imperative for achieving the full potential of product life cycle management (PLM) investment. Yet over the past decades achieving effective executive backing has been the exception rather than the rule. More recently, PLM has been more frequently viewed through the lens of enterprise digital transformation and is gaining attention within the executive ranks. In this spotlight session, we will focus on key questions: What motivated them to step into this role? How would they describe their role? What are their greatest satisfactions? What do they see as keys to success, and what do they see as barriers and constraints? What guidance would they share with PLM program managers and executives considering stepping into that role? This discussion promises to deliver invaluable guidance to PLM professionals seeking to elevate the value of their PLM programs.
• Conference Adjourns