Back in 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign faced a tough political climate. His team needed a simple, focused message to cut through the noise. That’s when strategist James Carville famously wrote a phrase on the campaign war room wall:
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
That sentence became a rallying cry. It helped the campaign stay laser-focused on what truly mattered to people—their financial well-being. And ultimately, it helped Clinton win.
I’ve been thinking about that phrase lately—not in a political context, but in the world I live and breathe every day: product lifecycle management. And it struck me that PLM needs a similar wake-up call.
Because for all the talk about platforms, modules, integrations, and digital transformation, we keep missing the most important thing.
It’s the data, stupid.
A Follow-Up to the PLM Architecture Debate
Last week, I published an article Rethinking Monolithic PLM Architecture – Exploring What Comes Next. The reaction was overwhelming. I want to thank everyone for sharing your thoughts and insight speaking about different perspectives and experience in implementations and vendors. The consensus wasn’t black or white. It wasn’t “monoliths are dead” or “composable is the future.” It was something more nuanced. The examples shared the comparison with very successful “monolithic business systems” like enterprise resource planning systems like SAP that became extremely successful and was focusing on brining all data to a single databases and going far to the examples of enterprise PLM software that focused on integration of many functions under the single roof, but still failing short to cover broad scope of business processes in manufacturing and supply chain management outside of engineering.
People are recognizing that while integrated systems have their place, the future of PLM depends on a much more flexible, open, and data-centric approach. Especially when we think about how companies make decisions and how information actually flows across the business.
And that’s where I believe the true shift is happening—not in how many features a system has, but in how it treats data.
From Control to Connectivity: The Problem with Monoliths
For decades, PLM has been synonymous with big platforms—one vendor, one database, one system to “rule them all.” The thinking was simple: integrate everything into one place and you’ll eliminate chaos. It was directly associated with a business transformation
But in reality, most companies don’t operate in a perfectly controlled, single-system world. They have multiple tools, evolving processes, and teams that span across functions and locations. And more often than not, their PLM ends up being the place where engineering files go to rest—not a dynamic system that connects people, processes, and decisions.
Here’s the core issue: these monolithic systems were built for control, not for flow. They manage things like revision history and CAD vaulting very well, but they struggle with agility, openness, and real-time collaboration across departments and other companies.
They keep the data well organized, when the bigger value is in letting the data move and be available to people and organizations outside of engineering.
A Better Mental Model: Building the Manufacturing Graph
I want to reflect on the past two decades of innovation. The success and power came from the way companies are focusing on the data and connecting people and services. Check the companies you all know. All these companies have one thing in common – they built networks.
- Google didn’t just catalog websites—it built the graph of the internet based on page rank.
- Facebook built the graph of people and allowed to connect friends, families, and businesses.
- LinkedIn built the graph of your professional connections and interests.
- Uber mapped the real-time graph of transportation.
- Airbnb created a graph of hosts, guests, and locations.
Each of these companies succeeded because they understood that the value wasn’t in building a monolithic application—it was in creating a connected fabric of data, where value could emerge from the relationships between things.
So what’s the equivalent in manufacturing?
It’s the Manufacturing Graph—a connected data model that links products, engineers, suppliers, manufacturers, machines, revisions, costs, compliance… everything. A network, not a silo. A system of relationships, not a vault of files.
We need to stop thinking of PLM as a system for storing files and start thinking of it as the infrastructure for connected decision-making.
Why ERP Succeeded (and PLM Didn’t)
Let’s take a moment to compare ERP and PLM—because the difference in adoption is important.
My readers brought ERP as a symbol of success and monolithic well integrated architecture. While it is true, I want to emphasize that back to ERP roots, it was about centralizing a company finance system that was indeed huge innovation to provide a single picture of finance transactions for CFO – main buyer of ERP software.
ERP systems, for all their complexity and rigidity, succeeded by offering a clear and compelling value proposition: one place to manage your financials, your transactions, your operations. It was painful to implement—but once it was in, it brought immediate organizational alignment. It touched everyone. It was built around process and data—not just applications.
PLM, on the other hand, stayed trapped in engineering. Most PLM systems were built to organize CAD files, manage revisions, and control access. And while these are important tasks, they don’t offer enough value to the broader business. PLM vendors focused on applications, user interfaces, and CAD integrations—but often ignored the bigger picture: how to make product data work across the company.
And here’s the result: while ERP became the backbone of enterprise financial data flow, PLM still perceived mostly as a tool for engineers. Powerful, yes—but isolated.
The Missed Opportunity—and the Path Forward
The real opportunity in PLM isn’t in chasing the next module or application. The opportunity is strikingly high pain that exists in manufacturing industry related to the complexity. It is complexity of product, product development and manufacturing process, and supply chain. By addressing the pain, PLM industry can find an opportunity .
I can see an opportunity to introduce systems that treat data as a product—systems that expose data, link it, enrich it, and make it usable by people and machines alike and connect manufacturing businesses together. It is not a single system, but a network of data services that will create a mechanism for departments and companies to work together.
To do that, we need to move away from platforms that hoard data and toward ecosystems that share it. We need PLM vendors who embrace openness as a business model—not just a technical checkbox.
That’s going to require new thinking. New architectures. New incentives.
Imagine a PLM world where vendors make money not by locking you into their tools, but by providing valuable data services—analytics, decision support, AI assistants, compliance engines—all built on open, accessible product data. Imagine a supply chain that runs not on emailed PDFs and Excel BOMs, but on live data streams between buyers, engineers, and suppliers.
This isn’t science fiction. The technologies exist. However, there are still missing things in this puzzle. Some of them are technological, some others in business models and also a shift in mindset.
What is my conclusion?
When you zoom out, the message becomes clear. Whether we’re talking about PLM, ERP, MES, or the next shiny digital thread solution—it all comes down to one thing:
Can the data be connected and flow?
If the answer is no, then no amount of user interface polish or integration promises will save you.
Because at the end of the day, data is what drives decisions. It’s what connects people. It’s what defines how your product gets made. And it’s what will determine the future of PLM.
So let’s stop obsessing over tools and start focusing on what really matters.
Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Disclaimer: I’m the co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM, a digital-thread platform providing cloud-native collaborative and integration services between engineering tools including PDM, PLM, and ERP capabilities. With extensive experience in federated CAD-PDM and PLM architecture, I’m advocates for agile, open product models and cloud technologies in manufacturing. My opinion can be unintentionally biased
