Скачать или смотреть The Future of PLM E07 - Could PLM have saved the 737MAX? A PLM Thought Leaders Debate!

n this episode of The Future of PLM, Michael Finocchiaro brings together one of the deepest expert panels in the industry — over 200 years of combined PLM experience — to tackle the most uncomfortable question in modern engineering: Can PLM, digital threads, and model-based systems engineering prevent catastrophic product failures? 

Patrick Hillberg opens with a powerful walkthrough of the GM ignition-switch crisis and the Boeing 737 MAX disasters, showing how siloed decisions, missing requirements traceability, flawed incentives, and organizational dysfunction led to deaths, recalls, and tens of billions in losses. He challenges the panel with three core questions:
• Does PLM actually help prevent failures like GM or Boeing?
• If digital threads are the answer, who owns the business model to operate them?
• Do engineers have a moral obligation to speak truth to power, even when careers are on the line? 

The panel — Rob Ferrone, Oleg Shilovitsky, Jos Voskuil, Martin Eigner, Kenn Hartman, and Brion Carroll — digs into:
• The limits of today’s PLM systems and why ALM often has tighter requirement-to-test linkage
• Why test data, MRO data, and operational feedback loops remain broken
• Digital thread vs. digital twin confusion and where real-time data actually fits
• Vendor incentives, cost-cutting cultures, and why technology alone can’t overcome bad governance
• Whether AI agents could finally close the loop between design, testing, and field operations
• How PLM must expand to include as-used, in-service, and even recycling data for safety-critical systems 

This is a candid, unscripted, high-signal discussion about responsibility, engineering ethics, and the future of product lifecycle management in a world where autonomous systems and AI make failures both harder to detect and more costly to ignore.

If you work in PLM, systems engineering, aerospace, automotive, industrial robotics, safety, or product governance — this is essential viewing.