digital-thread
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Josh Epstein Turns Engineering Complexity Into a Story People Can Use
A math-trained marketer who protects his mornings for whiteboards, Epstein has spent nearly three decades making dense enterprise technology legible. At Aras, his subject is the digital thread - and the next test is whether AI can be trusted with it.
Plataine Wants the Factory to Make the Next Call - Before the Expensive Roll Expires
A roll of carbon fiber can expire, a tool can vanish and one late machine can scramble the week. Plataine built an industrial decision layer for exactly that mess - and its best evidence is measured in saved material, recovered hours and fewer wrong cuts.
Aras fired its sales team and made the software free. Airbus came calling.
The Andover software maker spent seven slow years selling PLM the usual way. Its 2007 reset - free software, paid certainty, and customizations that survive upgrades - turned a near-stall into an enterprise foothold.
Tom Hennessey Makes the Factory Floor Legible
The iBASEt CMO has spent a career turning factory complexity into plain language. His recurring argument is simple: reliable work begins when the right information reaches the right person at the right moment.
The Factory Software Behind Fighter Jets Has a New Assignment: Make AI Auditable
iBASEt spent four decades turning aerospace shop-floor paperwork into a digital record. Now it is betting that the same governed data can make factory AI useful without asking engineers to trust a black box.
The Tiny New York Company Teaching 100 Million Parts to Speak the Same Language
XSB spent decades organizing the industrial world’s least glamorous data - part numbers, price files, standards and PDFs. Its reward is a strategic role inside Exiger’s supply-chain intelligence machine.
Catherine Kniker
Catherine Kniker began by decoding crashed computers. Now the Irish-born PTC executive is working on a larger systems problem: helping manufacturers connect product data, business strategy and sustainability before the first part reaches the factory floor.
PTC
For four decades, PTC has sold the software behind the objects people rarely think of as software projects. Now it is simplifying its portfolio around a bigger bet: that clean, connected product data will become the operating memory for industrial AI.
Canvas Envision
Canvas Envision (Canvas GFX) is a Boston-based enterprise software company that turns 3D CAD data, documents and video into interactive, model-based digital work instructions for frontline manufacturing workers. Its cloud platform serves as the visual execution layer of the digital thread, connecting engineering systems (PLM, MES) to the factory floor so assembly, maintenance and repair teams get accurate, up-to-date guidance instead of outdated PDFs and tribal knowledge. Building on 40 years of Canvas graphics heritage, the company serves aerospace, defense, automotive, medical device and industrial machinery manufacturers.
Garth Coleman
Garth Coleman is the CEO of Canvas GFX (Canvas Envision), a Boston-based manufacturing software company building tools that turn engineering data into interactive, 3D visual work instructions for frontline factory workers. A mechanical engineer by training with an MBA from Babson, he spent roughly 19 years at Dassault Systemes leading global strategy for 3D visualization, PLM, AR/VR, and generative AI before taking the top job at Canvas. He champions a 'connected knowledge' approach to manufacturing, arguing that the industry modernized its products and processes but left the people on the floor relying on static PDFs and printed checklists.
Istari Digital
Istari Digital is a Cambridge, Massachusetts software company building a digital engineering platform that connects fragmented engineering data - models, simulations, requirements and test artifacts - across teams, suppliers and classified environments. Founded in 2022 by former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper, the company aims to let regulated industries like aerospace and defense validate, secure and certify complex systems in minutes instead of months. Its flagship effort, Flyer One, is working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to make a modified X-56A the world's first digitally certified aircraft.