PTC Windchill Program Review

Transcription

1 Program Review Transforming How Companies Create and Service Products November 2012 CIMdata, Inc Research Park Drive Ann Arbor, MI

2 PTC Windchill Program Review Abstract: PTC continues to add new functionality and enhance existing capabilities in new versions of PTC Windchill. Highlights of the latest releases (PTC Windchill 10.0 and 10.1) are reviewed in this paper. PTC provides a broad-based PLM capability that is readily accessible to all types of people who need to participate in product development processes and who create or use product information. According to users with whom we spoke, PTC Windchill 10.0 and 10.1 are easier to implement, support, and maintain than previous versions. With a focus on process maturity that is critical to supporting the essential link between processes and data, PTC Windchill 10.0 and 10.1 improves on an already strong PLM solution set. Introduction Companies exist to deliver products and services to their customers. One way to build a sustainable competitive advantage is by optimizing the internal processes used to develop and deliver these products and services. A multitude of solutions exist to help companies achieve this goal. Over the last twenty years, the market for software solutions to support product development has become broadly known as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). PLM is a strategic approach to most effectively create a company s products and services. PTC is a global leader in all aspects of PLM. One pillar in their PLM strategy is PTC Windchill. This CIMdata Program Review provides a summary of PTC s strategy in the PLM market, their Windchill offerings, and other aspects of their Windchill program. This paper will focus on many of the improvements made by PTC in the last few years, mainly covering PTC Windchill 10.0 and PTC Windchill 10.1, which became available in April Research for this paper was supported by PTC. Business Challenges As products and services have become more complex, companies have sought to simultaneously optimize three criteria: Reduce development time Lower product cost Improve product quality They are undertaking these criteria, as their customers are demanding more features and variants to satisfy the need for mass product customization. Adding globalization to the mix complicates their product programs even more. PTC Windchill helps companies streamline product lifecycle processes. PLM provides substantial benefits across product development processes. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 1

3 According to economist Thomas Friedman, the world is getting flatter every day, with new competition impacting pricing with downward pressure. 1 Companies have to run increasingly faster just to stay in the same place, but most just fall behind. Figure 1 summarizes the interactions of all of the forces companies face today. Figure 1 Today s Competitive Environment In their most recent global CEO study, the IBM Institute for Business Value finds that 80% of CEOs expect complexity to continue to increase in the coming years, and 51% of CEOs doubt that their organizations will be able to cope with it. According to the study s results, which correlate CEOs answers with their companies business performance, the most successful companies succeed through innovation including customers and other actors in the innovation process. It is not enough to simply innovate. Companies must ensure that their innovation process is optimal, leveraging the reuse and exploitation of all possible information sources. Optimizing product development is crucial to capturing maximum value, no matter where a company sits in the value chain. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), working with Business Week magazine, annually surveys over sixteen hundred executives about their innovation practices. After pulling back on innovation spending in 2009, their 2010 survey showed that 72% of respondents put innovation among their top three organizational priorities (versus 64% in 2009). Innovation was seen as vital to taking advantage of the recovering global economy to 84% of respondents. The need to innovate and capture value is true for companies of all sizes and across industries. Companies at the top of the value chain have to include customers, partners, and suppliers in the innovation process, taking care to effectively capture, manage, and leverage their intellectual property over multiple product lifecycles. For companies that are currently suppliers, the path to success comes from increasing the intellectual content in what they deliver to customers. If they can supply more than just parts, but rather complete Optimizing product development is crucial to capturing maximum value, no matter where a company sits in the value chain. 1 Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 2

4 subsystems, they can demand higher prices and realize more profits. This requires that those with primary skills such as design and engineering have direct and rapid access to all kinds of product development information. To do this requires IT solutions that can support the new innovation paradigm. How can companies achieve innovation? PLM has evolved over the last twentyplus years, from a set of tools to an enterprise business strategy, enabled by technologies that can help companies of all sizes optimize their product development processes. PLM is a primary supporting concept for achieving innovation. PTC, one of the world s largest PLM companies, is a major provider of PLM with their PTC Windchill and related solutions. PTC s PLM Strategy CIMdata uses a very broad definition of PLM. It includes not only data and process management, but also, as shown in Figure 2, CAD, simulation and analysis, digital manufacturing, and other solutions that support product development and provide support across the entire lifecycle of the product. Figure 2 CIMdata s PLM Model Depicts the Breadth of PLM PTC s product suite in support of PLM fits very well within the breadth of this definition. As shown in Figure 3, they provide solutions for all major areas of what CIMdata defines as PLM. Given that, this paper will concentrate on Windchill, which is PTC s data and process management solution. Windchill helps companies manage the entire product lifecycle from early product concept through design and manufacturing planning, to product support and service planning. They illustrate lifecycle support in the form of Figure 3. It can be seen that Windchill covers areas that extend outside the local corporate enterprise to include all of the people who have to be involved in a product s development suppliers, customers, product engineering, marketing, sales, and services. As shown in Figure 3, PTC has a broad solution offering that is within CIMdata s definition of PLM and integrates with other enterprise solutions such PTC Windchill helps companies manage the entire product lifecycle from early product concept through design and manufacturing planning, to product support and service planning. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 3

5 as ERP. PTC s definition of PLM is somewhat narrower than CIMdata s with CAD, ALM, and SCM being outside of the PLM sphere. Figure 3 PTC Solution Offerings (Courtesy of PTC) PTC Windchill is also industry agnostic in that it is not specifically architected to support a particular industry. Indeed, PTC has Windchill customers across a number of diverse industry segments including industrial machinery, consumer products, high-tech electronics, automotive, retail, medical products, aerospace, and others. A key theme that PTC promotes is that, in addition to other product development process models, PTC Windchill supports an innovate guide evolve product development process. This strategy promotes higher quality products based on the use of PTC Windchill to guide the innovation process and promote reuse of previous work. Many of the updates in PTC Windchill 10 and 10.1 are intended to support speed to market, improved quality, and lower cost. PTC Windchill is industry agnostic. It is not architected to support any specific industry. Windchill Program This section describes PTC Windchill and related solutions from the PTC PLM solutions suite. Software Development Methodology The Windchill Product Group has embraced the Scrum approach to software development and the many techniques that support it. In 2005, PTC s product development organization received a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level 2, Managed certification. A solid achievement one that has undoubtedly resulted in more consistent project execution and software deliveries for years. But like many other progressive organizations, this wasn t good enough. The traditional waterfall approach they had been using just wasn t Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 4

6 giving them the competitive edge they sought. It wasn t allowing them to be as responsive and agile to the market as they knew they needed to be, and this is where Scrum came into play. Much of what PTC executes in Scrum terms can be traced back to what Schwaber and Beedle describe in their book Agile Software Development with Scrum, 2 which has been highly influential on the development and implementation of Scrum in organizations like PTC. PTC s Scrum pursuit as it relates to the Windchill product group primarily dates back to PTC Windchill 9.1 and much of the development work it performed for one of its major industrial customers at the time. Today, the Windchill product development group boasts more than fifty teams using Scrum, who are shipping product features and functions (i.e., releasable code) to quality assurance (QA) every two to four weeks. In turn, these two- to four-week cycles are repeated throughout a longer three-month cycle to deliver something tangible to PTC s customers. PTC is currently looking to shorten these cycles. This doesn t mean they will inundate their customers with new functionality, but rather it does mean that PTC should have a higher percentage of first-time-right code releases and a higher probability of meeting or exceeding its customers expectations regarding, e.g., quality, functionality, ease of use, and delivery date. These short development cycles keep PTC s ten-person development teams on task and ensure that they don t lose focus on what they are trying to accomplish. This also allows them to validate their development with key customers and the QA group much earlier than ever before. As mentioned previously, this has already proven to be a key enabler for higher first-time quality and customer satisfaction. This should even become more evident with upcoming releases of PTC Windchill. It should be noted that the Windchill development group isn t the only group within PTC to have embraced the Scrum approach. Building on some of the experience of their acquired products including CoCreate, MathCAD, Insight, and others where best practices were identified, PTC has had the opportunity to create a community of practice around the Scrum approach. PTC Windchill benefits from the Scrum development approach whenever customers do quality audits of PTC, which PTC states now occur with more frequency than in the past. Their extensible architecture, industry focus, and evolving user environment also help PTC to provide solutions targeted directly to their customer base. Architecture and Operating Environment PTC Windchill uses a multi-tier architecture to support both local and distributed user environments. This is shown in Figure 4. The three tiers are: The Client Tier, which has the tools needed to access PTC Windchill. Users can access the client from Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Because of their Scrum development methodology, PTC should have a higher percentage of first-timeright code releases and a higher probability of meeting or exceeding its customers expectations. The three-tier architecture of PTC Windchill provides flexibility for implementations. 2 Schwaber, Ken; Beedle, Mike. Agile Software Development with Scrum. Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 5

7 The Application Tier, which is host to the web and application servers. The application servers support the business logic, provide the interfaces to integrations to other systems (such as ERP), and provide content storage. The application tier is typically placed in a protected zone for applications (often within a corporate data center) and, in highly secure deployments; the web server is often placed within a demilitarized zone (DMZ). The Database Tier, or data tier, is typically where the metadata is stored in a relational database management system (RDBMS) such as Oracle or SQL Server. Figure 4 Three-Tier Architecture with Replicated File Server (Courtesy of PTC) Remote users may have a linked, replicated data server to cut down on network traffic, especially when dealing with large files such as CAD data. The servers provide security through an LDAP server bundled with PTC Windchill. It supports user and group administration and authentication. Both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server can be used for the application database. PTC supports these databases on any operating system supported by their vendors. On top of this three-tier operating environment, PTC has created an integrated product architecture as shown in Figure 5. This architecture provides a collaborative environment that can support extended enterprises. It is the bridge between the people who have to work with product information (on the left) and the various data sources (on the right), with the process model as the unifying medium. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 6

8 Figure 5 PTC Windchill s Architecture (Courtesy of PTC) Packaging PTC Windchill is comprised of a number of packages built on the architecture described above and using a consistent user interface. A number of new or updated capabilities are part of Windchill 10 and 10.1 and are described below. These include: Mechanical design integration Electrical CAD integration Variant and product family design Change management Configuration management Integrated requirements management Manufacturing process management Outsourcing support Design verification and validation Retail and consumer product support Document management As shown in Figure 6, these capabilities positively impact a number of business process areas that are common across many industries and spanning the product lifecycle. PTC Windchill provides support for many important business processes. Process Focus Product lifecycle management is about work processes, specifically the product development process, as much as it is about data management. PTC has published the Value Roadmap to show how companies can link their business strategies to their product development initiatives. As a part of their process Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 7

9 orientation, PTC is structuring product offerings to support best practices across the product lifecycle (Figure 6). In support of this, they have developed a methodology to assess the maturity of best practice adoption in three key technology areas: product development, quality, and platform. The product development best practices are focused on design and collaboration. Quality is focused on incorporating quality planning tools into the product development process. Platform is focused on product development process and product architecture. Figure 6 PTC Windchill Provides Support Throughout the Product Lifecycle (Courtesy of PTC) Four levels of maturity measure the use of best practices. The first level is defined as ad hoc, with best practices being used inconsistently. The remaining three levels are defined by more and consistent use of sophisticated best practices from the PTC Value Roadmap. PTC has associated the best practices with a series of products that support them. A company can assess their maturity level by comparing their processes with those on the roadmap and by reviewing their software inventory and its utilization to support best practices. Just because a company owns the software for a specific maturity level does not mean they are operating at that maturity level. The data obtained from this type of assessment can help define a specific product development processimprovement roadmap for a company. User Environment The user interface has been made more consistent across modules and more like the MS Office tab-and-ribbon interface. Screens are configurable to fit the needs of different roles, allowing users to gain access to solutions with less effort. Users can now see information closely related to the item they are working on, including the geometric view of how related items fit together. This allows them Process maturity can be assessed with the Value Roadmap. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 8

10 to select related information without searching. Item relationships are displayed as lists, graphical charts, and assembly views. The new interface appears to reduce the learning curve for casual as well as expert users, improving productivity. This interface is based on both customer input and user experience test results. PTC Windchill is accessible from ipads and iphones today, with access from Android devices planned for the future. Core PLM Functions of PTC Windchill 10 The updated capabilities in PTC Windchill 10 provide a rich set of functions that support various business issues common to companies in a broad number of industries. Highlights of the new solutions supported by PTC Windchill follow. Mechanical Design Integration The mechanical design integration package has been a core focus of PTC Windchill since it s inception. It enables MCAD files and assembly structures to be integrated with an item-based BOM. Bi-directional synchronization is possible; changes to the assembly within the MCAD application are reflected in the BOM, and BOM changes update the MCAD assembly file. PTC Windchill top-down design support allows a product architect to outline a high-level assembly structure and then distribute it among the company s CAD designers to build out the product s detail. As they complete and submit detailed component designs, the part structure builds the product design from the bottom up, mimicking real-world workflows. Design-in-context capabilities especially benefit the design process of large and complex products. Most design teams will logically structure the design of a sophisticated product based on major product subsystems that combine up to the top-level product assembly. The result is that within any one spatial region there will be components from any number of different subsystems. With some PDM solutions, in order to work in a specific area, the user needs to start loading product data beginning at the top-level assembly node to get down to all the detail they require. With PTC Windchill, users can filter the product data as they drill down to their area of interest, and then assign a spatial zone to the location that can be recalled for follow-on development. In addition, the Heterogeneous Design In Context (HDIC) capabilities of PTC Windchill allow product developers to smoothly design with component models from many of the major foreign CAD software suites included in the product assembly. By using embedded CAD interoperability software, multi-cad data management, and enterprise visualization utilities, users can eliminate much of the manual conversion process and redefinition of features when working with foreign data. This support extends to electrical CAD (ECAD) from the major vendors, allowing users to manage schematics, PCBs, and wire harness information alongside mechanical data. Design in context and eliminate much of the manual conversion process and redefinition of features when working with foreign data. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 9

11 Electrical CAD Integration Electrical and electronic components are used in many products today. The Windchill ECAD integration connects to ECAD authoring tools so their data can be managed within Windchill. It also enables access to data from the ECAD PDM solution if one is employed. The data (connectors, wires, resistors, chips, boards, etc.) are fully controlled and can be included in the EBOM. PTC Creo View can access 2D and 3D geometric definitions of the ECAD data so they can be viewed in context of the mechanical assembly to validate form and fit. Product developers working in different disciplines can create, manage, and share mechanical and electrical product data within PTC Windchill as part of a unified product structure within a single environment. The PTC Windchill Workgroup Manager for ECAD supports data integration with the major ECAD vendors including Altium, Cadence, Mentor, and Zuken. PTC Windchill 10.1 brings added provision for CAM350 and BluePrint-PCB from DownStream Technologies. The solution allows users to manage and collaborate on versionspecific ECAD content, as well as on specifications, text, and other productrelated information for search and retrieval. The ECAD Workgroup Manager is updated to use the Windchill Workgroup Manager common framework, bringing with it improved bill of material (BOM) management, supporting design in context and top-down design. ECAD Authoring tools can be invoked from the PTC Windchill user interface providing a unified ECAD/MCAD user experience. The software contains expanded ECAD viewing and cross-probe capabilities. Users can select items in either the structure manager or directly on the graphical image, and both representations of the selected items are highlighted. Electrical engineers have long been familiar with the cross-select capability between the schematic and the PCB, but now mechanical designers can have a similar view into the electrical world. Cross selection allows the mechanical designer to select a component in the 3D virtual design realm and have the ECAD representation highlighted in its window. They get access to the intelligence found only in the ECAD data realm such as electrical routings and other associated components surrounding the electrical items. Variant and Product Family Design Variant and product family design supports parametric components and variable assembly capabilities. PTC Creo allows components and assemblies to change their size or change the configuration of components based on user input interacting with product family design rules. For example, a design rule may specify that if a product grows larger than a specific size then structural reinforcements are required. Within PTC Windchill, the BOM can adapt to these inputs. If a higher trim level is selected for a particular instance or variant of a BOM, then the additional trim components are included in the BOM for the finished product. Over the past few years, product development companies have invested significant effort into establishing a modular structure for their products that PTC Windchill Workgroup Manager for ECAD supports data integration with the major ECAD vendors. PTC Windchill 10.1 delivers enhancements that improve creating configurable products. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 10

12 gives them added flexibility in defining and delivering configured products to an ever changing market. PTC defines a configurable product as a design that represents a family of products, which in turn is built from configurable modules of interchangeable variants. The filtering and configuration logic of PTC Windchill 10.1 is now shared by PTC s Creo 2.0 design solution, providing users a consistent environment within which to define and manage product configurations. PTC Windchill 10.1 enhancements include the ability to trace where an option is used and to navigate product structures by option combinations. The designer can better organize product configurations by using global rules in their creation or by creating family-specific rules. In addition, users may more easily search for and reuse previously created variants. Change Management The change management process has been supported by PTC Windchill since its inception and is a core data management capability. Using workflow technology, change requests are captured with the affected data and files, routed for approval, and routed to the appropriate personnel to update the data. The change process workflow follows change management best practices and can be adapted to meet the needs of the businesses process. The data from the workflow steps can be used to assess process performance. In this PTC Windchill update, Change Management has some new capabilities and enhancements to existing capabilities that allow more flexibility and improved execution. The change author can now control the sequence of change tasks. This helps to ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time, reducing the time and cost of a change. Task assignments are now more flexible and can include an optional review step. As changes progress through the workflow, data can be added and modified, which can help make the purpose of the change clear and easy to understand. PTC states that the new simplified promotion wizard provides a 50% reduction in steps to process a change, which again helps to speed up the change process and improve execution. The workflow engine has been enhanced to allow user-defined rules. Two example rules, maturity and attribute checks are shipped with the product. As the change workflow executes, data can be validated against these rules before proceeding to the next step, which helps minimize rework. Users are also able to select Release Targets for change activities. These help ensure that the appropriate activities are complete before a target can be achieved, ensuring product quality. Several smaller enhancements further improve ease of use. Disposition has been enhanced to better align with practical change situations. Within change management, disposition can be a key issue if expensive tooling, material, or inprocess product needs to scrapped or reworked. Change reporting has been enhanced so management has a clearer view of the change process. Finally, Enhanced change reporting provides management with a clearer view of the change process. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 11

13 problem reports and deviations or waivers can be initiated from Projects. As the use of integrated project management software expands, it is becoming the user interface for many change initiators, so having direct access to these capabilities will make their jobs easier and their workflows smoother. Configuration Management Configuration Management in PTC Windchill is used to view and modify hierarchical structures like BOMs or assemblies. A BOM, or structure of parts, can be used to represent a configuration of a product. Since complex products can have many thousands of parts in a BOM, and many different variants if the product has features and options, the BOM can become large and difficult to navigate. Ensuring that a BOM can be viewed, modified, and controlled easily and accurately is the key to running an efficient business. In PTC Windchill 10 two key capabilities were added: a new product structure browser and enhanced multi-level BOM comparisons. The new Product Structure Browser is implemented completely in HTML so no plug-ins or thick clients are required to use it. It is also a full-featured BOM editor, and can manipulate all levels of a structure. The structure can be filtered based upon: Configuration specification Spatial relationships Attributes Options and choices The powerful filtering options allow specific views of a product to be isolated quickly for visualization, analysis, or modification. Visualization is deeply embedded so once the configuration is identified, it can be quickly displayed and manipulated. BOM management is a complex subject, even when the product is simple. An assembly created by a CAD authoring tool is a CAD BOM. The Engineering BOM (EBOM) is usually a superset of the CAD BOM. A manufacturing BOM (MBOM) is a derivative of the EBOM, and there can be many other types of BOMs. Items in the EBOM represent parts that are data structures containing the geometric and non-geometric data that describes the product. Unfortunately, it is difficult to automate the transformation of one BOM to another (e.g., EBOM to MBOM), so manual intervention is typically required and can be tedious for even a simple product. PTC s enhancements to the multi-level BOM-compare capability, illustrated in Figure 7, will be helpful for people who have to process BOMs. Ensuring that a BOM can be viewed, modified, and controlled easily and accurately is the key to running an efficient business. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 12

14 Figure 7 Multi-BOM Compare The compare function supports CAD BOM to Product BOM, Product BOM to CAD, and Product BOM to Product BOM comparisons, so it will be useful across the enterprise and not just for CAD users. Integrated Requirements Management Windchill 10.1 is the first release of the integration of Windchill with the MKS Integrity product recently acquired by PTC (Figure 8). Integrity is a full-featured requirements management solution that enables the tracking of any requirement throughout its implementation in a closed-loop fashion. Requirements can be authored within Integrity, come from a direct integration with DOORS, be imported via an industry standard format like RIF/ReqIF, or imported from Microsoft Word or Excel. The Microsoft interface allows requirements to be identified in the Word or Excel document and linked to a requirements item in Integrity. If the document changes, the requirements item is updated automatically. Requirements for mechanical, electrical, electronics, and software can be managed within Integrity and related to the appropriate items within a product or system configuration. Full traceability is supported, for example requirement to item (and related item, e.g., a software module and its test plan), and vice versa. Reports can be generated to identify product development status based on the satisfaction of requirements. Requirements and configurations of requirements can be reused to shorten data modeling time. PTC Windchill 10.1 provides an improved requirements management and tracking capability. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 13

15 Requirements can be related to individual parts in a PTC Windchill BOM for complete downstream traceability. This linkage closes the loop to ensure that a product meets all the requirements in its definition. Figure 8 Requirements Management Process Mapped to PTC Windchill Capabilities Manufacturing Process Management Manufacturing Process Management defines how the virtual product definition will be made into a physical product. The key authoring capabilities include tools to develop manufacturing process plans and work instructions. The ability to transform an EBOM to an MBOM helps to reduce errors by leveraging design information in support of manufacturing activities. The 10.1 release of PTC Windchill MPMLink leverages the new product structure editor to streamline the transformation of an EBOM to an MBOM. In addition, the Variant Design capabilities provide support through manufacturing. PTC Windchill MPMLink can reuse manufacturing process plans and leverage them across the product variants. PTC Windchill now supports the release of BOMs to multiple ERP solutions, a useful capability when there are multiple manufacturing sources for a product. PTC Windchill MPMLink works in conjunction with PTC s geometry-based tools for product design and manufacturing. By integrating 3D viewable data with manufacturing processes, planning time and effort can be reduced dramatically. Part Machining planning can be done in PTC Creo and captured within PTC Windchill MPMLink for downstream use. Product Manufacturing Information (PMI) such as tolerances and annotations can be extracted from the 3D model in PTC Creo and leveraged in process plans. This type of integration reduces the time from design to production while improving quality. PTC Creo View allows 3D designs and animations to be shared with the shop floor in an easily accessible format without the need for a CAD license. Outsourcing Support Outsourcing is a key strategy in many businesses. Some companies outsource design work, others outsource some or all manufacturing, and some outsource both. Actually, almost any aspect of a business can be outsourced. Windchill has supported outsourcing via its security model for many years. By structuring outsourcing partners as groups, data access can easily be managed, provided the partner has access to the PTC Windchill data server where that information is stored. MPM allows companies to move their products from concept to reality. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 14

16 PTC has added two new capabilities to PTC Windchill to support this trend. For design outsourcers, it is now possible to check out designs to multiple projects. This allows numerous alternatives to be explored, or to support competition between design groups. Designs are managed in PTC Windchill, and alternative designs can be captured and maintained for future reference or use. Also, product and project sharing have been enhanced to make it easy to see all projects and folder locations. The status of each product is visible, and if it is out of date it can be selectively updated, with improved update speed as only the relevant data is updated. Design Verification and Validation A common issue that arises in the design of assembled products is component interference. It is much less costly to address interferences before physical parts are produced. Modeling tools like Pro/ENGINEER, PTC Creo, and Pro/MECHANICA as well as viewers like PTC Creo View have been used to find interferences and simulate product assembly and operation for years. PTC Windchill Interference Management Services automatically identifies and tracks design clash issues in the virtual mockup. A wealth of user options allows intelligent user exploration of interference and clearance checks on the product design. The engineer can modify user-defined parameters for the calculation including tolerance values used in the actual interference check. Component and assembly groupings based on meta-data values of product structure can facilitate the operation. Interference jobs submitted to the system are automatically queued and passed to an available interference worker (a batch mode invocation of PTC Creo View), allowing the user to quickly validate configurations and resolve any problems. PTC Windchill also supports an optional tool, PTC Creo View Animator, that animates digital mockups without the need for a CAD tool or complicated training. Parts of the assembly, constrained by the joints defined in the assembly model, can simply be dragged into place. This can be recorded and played back. Thus, PTC Creo View Animator provides users with an ability to explore a product design in order to understand the assembled product s movement and operation. The user can create an interactive animation of a single part, group of parts, or full assembly of a digital mockup, to better understand the functional operation of their product as well as its assembly and disassembly. In this way design flaws can be caught up front in the development process. Retail and Consumer Product Support PTC Windchill FlexPLM is a PLM product PTC acquired to focus on retail and consumer products. It supports both hard and soft goods; typical products are apparel and footwear, where all forms of product information including specifications need to be controlled for the entire value chain. The lifecycle and business processes in retail and consumer products can be quite different from discrete manufactured products such as airplanes, automobiles, and trains, where PLM is typically used. PTC Windchill Interference Management Services automatically identifies and tracks design clash issues in the virtual mockup. PTC Windchill FlexPLM supports retail and consumer product processes. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 15

17 The latest release of PTC Windchill FlexPLM is based on PTC Windchill PTC Windchill FlexPLM supports calendar management/new product introduction, concept development, merchandise planning, line planning, creative design, color development, materials development & testing, product specification management, change tracking, document management, sample management, supplier management, early sourcing, commitment management, costing, quality management, and supply chain collaboration. The breadth of processes supported shows the flexibility of PTC Windchill, and also provides customers with a turnkey system that can capture and support their complete product definition over its lifecycle. By implementing an integrated solution the customers can focus on their products rather than on managing a complex software environment. Document Management Document management was one of the first capabilities to be implemented within PDM and is a core capability of PTC Windchill PDMLink. Maintaining compatibility with Microsoft Office is key, and PTC now supports the 2003, 2007, and 2010 versions. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are supported, and Outlook s, attachments, and meetings can be captured and stored. If documents were created outside of the PLM solution they can be dragged and dropped into the Microsoft Windows environment for check-in and check-out. Document effectivity is now supported and can be assigned directly or via a workflow action. Go-to-Market Strategy Key PTC messages center on PTC Windchill enabling a Do More Know More Get More concept in which Windchill is a key enabler allowing users to do more during the product lifecycle by knowing more about their products performance, cost, quality, and other factors, resulting in them getting more value from their PLM-enabled processes and data. PTC Windchill 10 supports this by providing process-centric solutions (as were described in the sections above) across the product lifecycle from a more easily accessible platform. They have stressed ease of use and maintenance to allow them to more easily market to companies in both PTC s traditional industry sectors (such as high-tech and medical products) as well as to those in other industries, allowing organizations to implement Windchill into their product development processes more quickly and easily than in the past. The Value Roadmap allows potential PTC Windchill users to evaluate which solutions are needed to help them improve their business processes. PTC can combine this with a maturity assessment so that companies can understand how well they are fulfilling their process requirements. PTC Windchill is being delivered across multiple industries and will continue to be enhanced in the future. The current roadmap of enhancements stretches out a number of years. PTC Windchill 10 provides process-centric solutions across the product lifecycle from a more easily accessible platform. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 16

18 Customer Comments PTC Windchill Daktronics Daktronics designs and builds electronic scoreboards and display products featuring long-lasting light emitting diode (LED)-based systems. They build both standard display products as well as custom-designed and integrated systems to help provide the best solutions for each customer. Figure 9 is an example of a Daktronics display installation. Figure 9 Detroit Tigers Scoreboard (Courtesy of Daktronics) Daktronics uses PTC Windchill 10 to manage CAD and related data today. Their CAD environment includes PTC s Creo for 3D modeling and AutoCAD for 2D drawings. They also use PADS for PCB design, but this data is not yet managed in Windchill. Today they manage all PTC Creo, AutoCAD, MathCAD, PDF, and other design documents in PTC Windchill. PTC Windchill creates document numbers for these items. Prior to PTC Windchill 10, Daktronics has migrated in steps over time from Auto-trol CENTRA to PTC Windchill 8.0 to 9.1, then to Their experience is that each migration has been easier and faster than the previous migration and that PTC s tools to aid the migration process continue to be improved and simplified. They plan an upgrade to PTC Windchill 10.1 by year-end 2012 and expect this to go smoothly (which matches what other users are reporting). As Daktronics continues its PLM journey, they are adding support for more product development processes. Some items that are being considered for future expansion include replacing mostly manual workflow processes with Windchillsupported workflow, supporting collaboration, providing supplier Daktronics stated: PTC has improved its [migration] process with each version of the product. The easiest part about moving to 10.0 was the simplified migration tools provided by PTC. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 17

19 communication, leveraging visual data more fully, and integrating ECAD data management into PTC Windchill. User acceptance of the PTC Windchill work environment has been good. Benefits Daktronics claims include helping the people inside the organization improve their work processes and tying product information together in a more unified knowledge base. BAE Systems BAE Systems designs aerospace and defense products including vehicles and test equipment. The San Diego site uses PTC Creo Parametric 1.0 and all of their CAD data is managed in PTC Windchill 10.0 (San Diego will be upgrading to PTC Windchill 10.1 and PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 at the end of 2012). They also use PTC Windchill to execute workflows and support collaborative work internally as well as with suppliers. PTC Creo View 1.0 supports much of their collaboration and that data is also managed in their Windchill environment. The San Diego site migrated from PTC Pro/INTRALINK 3.X to PTC Windchill 9.1 in 2010 and then to PTC Windchill 10.0 in They report the migration was accomplished relatively easily; stating that migrating a database is always lots of hard work but in the end it all went smoothly. Figure 10 Geospatial Information Delivery Support from BAE (Courtesy of BAE) The smooth transition was partly due to the assistance of PTC s Data Migrator tool for PTC Pro/INTRALINK 3.x to PTC Windchill 9.1 and the much improved Upgrade Manager tool for PTC Windchill 9.1 to PTC Windchill They report these tools were easy to run, especially the Upgrade Manager (9.1 to 10.0). The hard part was performing all the testing that went into getting ready for their go-live. The BAE user community in San Diego has been very pleased with the new user interface in PTC Windchill They claim the new interface and functionality available in PTC Windchill 10.0 (and PTC Windchill 10.1) has allowed Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 18

20 improvements in efficiency and ease of use. The new functionality for administrative tasks is even more impressive. The time spent on the very complex tasks associated with running a PTC Windchill environment has been greatly reduced and streamlined by helping identify problems and resolve them much more quickly than in any previous release. Another benefit is that PTC Windchill allows them to manage the lifecycle of a product while allowing collaboration on associated information within a geographically dispersed team with varying levels of access and security. CIMdata s Assessment of PTC Windchill PTC has been a major PLM solutions supplier for many years. Their offerings span the breadth of CIMdata s definition of PLM. To learn how companies are using Windchill, you can find a large number of PTC PLM references at PTC provides a broad-based PLM capability that is readily accessible to all types of people who need to participate in product development processes and who create or use product information. This applies to people within companies as well as to collaborations with partners, suppliers, and customers across many industries. According to users with whom we spoke, PTC Windchill 10.0 and 10.1 are easier to implement, support, and maintain than previous versions. The enhancements to Change Management, while not dramatic, will help speed up a company s change process, and reduce their need for customization and tailoring when implementing PTC Windchill. The improved ease of use will encourage adoption and enable change documentation to be more complete and help the process flow smoother and faster. The new product structure browser s filtering capability is key to speeding up decisions. Improving the speed and ease of structure searches allows users to find what they are looking for faster. BOM Compare provides information that helps reduce mistakes in BOM transformations leading to improved quality. The integration of Integrity into PTC Windchill will be interesting to follow. Its integration with Windchill allows closed-loop requirements monitoring to be implemented throughout the complete product lifecycle. Obviously there is more work to be done to fully integrate and eliminate overlaps between previous Windchill capabilities and those in Integrity, but PTC has made an excellent start towards its integration goal. The broad focus of Integrity, in how it supports a complete mechatronics data model, is an excellent foundation to build from. We are pleased to see PTC s focus on process maturity; it shows that they understand that in order to develop products, data needs to be acted upon by processes. It appears that PTC has been able to quickly leverage the technology for BOM and variant management within the PTC Windchill MPMLink product so that Ease of use and implementation are reported to be greatly enhanced in PTC Windchill 10. The focus on process maturity is an important concept that is critical to supporting the essential link between processes and data. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 19

21 not only can design be done more quickly, but manufacturing planning is enhanced as well. Design and manufacturing outsourcing is common in today s business environment, but managing data and processes across a supply chain is difficult. The new concurrent alternative design capability takes away much of the pain of having multiple design groups work on the same product, and it captures and controls all product definition information, even the data that ultimately does not get used in manufacturing. PTC Windchill FlexPLM is an excellent implementation of PTC Windchill that focuses on the apparel and retail industry vertical markets and for companies with apparel-like content in their product mix. PTC has robust document management capabilities that they continue to enhance. Ensuring that the latest releases of Microsoft Office are supported is important, but it is just as important that they go back to the 2003 version, as many companies still use it. While part effectivity has been supported for a long time, adding support for document effectivity is valuable because documentation may change without a product change, due to regulatory and other issues. Windchill 10 improves on an already strong PLM solution set. We expect it to continue to evolve to support more parts of the product development process across more industry segments, making PTC Windchill one of the PLM solutions that companies should evaluate against their own specific product development requirements. About CIMdata CIMdata, a leading independent worldwide firm, provides strategic management consulting to maximize an enterprise s ability to design and deliver innovative products and services through the application of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. Since its founding nearly thirty years ago, CIMdata has delivered world-class knowledge, expertise, and best-practice methods on PLM solutions. These solutions incorporate both business processes and a wideranging set of PLM-enabling technologies. CIMdata works with both industrial organizations and providers of technologies and services seeking competitive advantage in the global economy. CIMdata helps industrial organizations establish effective PLM strategies, assists in the identification of requirements and selection of PLM technologies, helps organizations optimize their operational structure and processes to implement solutions, and assists in the deployment of these solutions. For PLM solution providers, CIMdata helps define business and market strategies, delivers worldwide market information and analyses, provides education and support for internal sales and marketing teams, as well as overall support at all stages of business and product programs to make them optimally effective in their markets. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 20

22 In addition to consulting, CIMdata conducts research, provides PLM-focused subscription services, and produces several commercial publications. The company also provides industry education through PLM certification programs, seminars, and conferences worldwide. CIMdata serves clients around the world from offices in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. To learn more about CIMdata s services, visit our website at or contact CIMdata at: 3909 Research Park Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA. Tel: Fax: ; or at Oogststraat 20, 6004 CV Weert, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 (0) This document is copyrighted by CIMdata, Inc. and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and conventions. This document may not be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form, posted on a public or private website or bulletin board, or sublicensed to a third party without the written consent of CIMdata. No copyright may be obscured or removed from the paper. CIMdata is a Registered Trademark of CIMdata, Inc. All trademarks and registered marks of products and companies referred to in this paper are protected. This document was developed on the basis of information and sources believed to be reliable. This document is to be used as is. CIMdata makes no guarantees or representations regarding, and shall have no liability for the accuracy of, data, subject matter, quality, or timeliness of the content. Copyright 2012 by CIMdata, Inc. 21