Systems Thinking is essential to managing exploding product complexities. Companies are investing in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methodologies and tools. Unfortunately, traditional product lifecycle management (PLM) software was built to manage the BOM (Bill of Materials), while MBSE’s focus is on the design intent prior to defining the BOM. This creates a gap in any digital thread. This paper discusses three examples of the successful integration of MBSE with a PLM platform resulting in a complete tool-agnostic digital thread.