- Windchill PDM Essentials
- Windchill PDMLink
- Windchill ProjectLink
- Windchill PartsLink
Imagine if you could manage quality, reliability, and risk at every stage of your product’s life cycle. You could reduce costs, speed innovation, and enhance next generation products. PTC’s product lifecycle management (PLM) software, Windchill, lets you do just that.
Want to see an example of how Windchill software is used? See how Virnig Manufacturing uses PTC Windchill to change the way their data is delivered within their organization.
Already using Windchill and need help with admin and support? You’ll want to check out our Alliance Program, provided to our customers for on-going technical support, business process consulting, and mentoring services on a monthly basis.
Already using Windchill but you or some of your team member don’t use it often, therefore, it gets confusing? You’ll want to check out our role-based apps for casual Windchill users – EAC Productivity Apps or ThingWorx Navigate will help you.
Don’t know what the heck PTC Windchill is? Then read on.
What is PTC Windchill?
PTC Windchill is a product lifecycle management (PLM) application suite that leverages a consolidated view of product information through multi-system data. It’s a systemic enterprise wide approach to maintaining product and process quality throughout the entire product lifecycle.
PTC Windchill PLM software provides a complete functionality dimension to help organizations capture product structures from computer-aided design tools, transform them into full engineering bill of materials (eBoMS), to manufacturing bill of materials (mBoMS), to service bill of materials (sBoMS) all while retaining the linkages between different perspectives on the product. Windchill solutions break down organizational barriers, allowing teams to work faster and more accurately all while reducing time-to-market and cutting costs.
The Windchill Product Lifecycle Management system can help streamline your product development and service information processes. It’s a system that can help your organization create better products, with more variations, faster, at a lower cost. As a manufacturer, your pressures are not only continual – they’re mounting. Your industry is changing. Your customers’ requirements are evolving. And your supply chain is constantly adjusting to
Windchill helps with exactly that. As an integral component of PTC ’s Product Development System, Windchill manages all product content and business processes throughout the product and service lifecycle. And it has a robust, high-performing architecture to help you today – and to prepare you for tomorrow’s uncertainties. Windchill provides a rich systematic approach for creating, configuring, managing and reusing product structures and associated content, such as CAD files, documentation, requirements, manufacturing information, service information, part/supplier data, calculations and illustrations.
Windchill can also play an important role in increasing your company’s competitiveness by allowing continuous improvements and automation of business processes and procedures. Windchill is an
PTC Windchill Cost
PTC Windchill made updates to their PLM packaging and pricing – which means you can customize dashboards and product data more than ever before at a cost that makes sense for your organization. Here is a breakdown of the new PLM structure.
PTC Windchill Certification
Once you’re ready to purchase the software, you’ll need to make sure it’s learned and understood in a timely manner and without frustration. We have a few options:
Short-Term Support: EAC’s Product Development System Services Team has a long track record of successfully implementing Windchill products.
Long-Term Support: Check out our Alliance Program – EAC’s PTC Windchill system administration and support services for on-going technical support.
Support at your own pace: Your team can get PTC Windchill certified by taking our classes we offer for end users and managers. Check out our training schedule.
The Windchill Products Explained:
Windchill products are application modules that offer users specific sets of features and capabilities within the Windchill application suite. Some of the most common Windchill PLM modules include:
What is Windchill PDM Essentials?
PTC Windchill Product Data Management (PDM) Essentials is built on PTC’s production proven PTC Windchill software.
Windchill PDM Essentials simplifies data management activities by transparently incorporating them into the design process. It manages all forms of information such as CAD drawings, customer requirements, schematics and Bill of Materials (BoMs) that are generated during product development.
This modern product data management solution makes it easy to manage, share, and review your data. It’s finally possible to have a single view of the latest product data, along with tighter integration to major end CAD vendors, Microsoft Office, and desktop tools. Plus, it allows your users to save time with better version control, automated data release, and simple search capabilities. Learn more by reading the PTC Windchill PDM Essentials Data Sheet.
What is Windchill PDMLink?
With an abundance of data dispersed throughout your organization, how do you maintain the integrity of your product information when multiple people are working on the same files? The solution is easy – Windchill PDMLink.
Windchill PDMLink is a Web-based, industry-proven Product Data Management (PDM) system that supports geographically dispersed teams while managing critical processes such as content, change and configuration management. Windchill PDMLink maintains the integrity of your product information by storing master data in a secure area where you can control, monitor, and record all changes.
When a change is made to your data, Windchill PDMLink stores a modified copy of the data, signed and dated, in a secure area alongside the old data, which remains in its original form as a permanent record. In addition to providing change control management, Windchill PDMLink enables you to manage your product’s release cycle as well as its configuration. Check out the PTC Windchill PDMLink Data Sheet for more information.
What is Windchill ProjectLink?
Windchill ProjectLink is a collaborative product development web-based environment that automates and tracks projects.
ProjectLink provides a common workspace where you and your team can share and discuss documents and product structures, hold meetings, and communicate and track progress on tasks. From private exchange environments to public business to business (B2B) exchanges, ProjectLink is a secure web-based system that can easily be used in any collaboration environment.
It can also be used well beyond the engineering and manufacturing departments of your organization. Any project that requires team members to share electronic information such as writing annual reports to
What is Windchill Partslink?
Windchill PartsLink is a module for PDMLink that adds part classification-based features.
PartsLink enables you to perform parametric attribute searching and manage your results through convenient navigation and searching. You can search parts by typing a free-form product description or a part number in the search criteria text box. You can browse the hierarchically organized structure of your parts using text and images. You can also refine your search by constraining parameters in a parametric search.
Windchill PartsLink enables your team to perform similar part searches, expanding your search to look for matching parts that have parametric attributes that are within a certain percentage or absolute tolerance of the selected part. Additionally, you can export the result set to a file.
Many companies lack a comprehensive part search system and as a result they lose the benefits of reusing product components. Criteria-based searching limits the result set, which helps a great deal in reuse decisions. PTC Windchill PartsLink helps solve that problem.
What is Windchill Quality Solutions?
Depending on your specific Windchill Quality Solutions suite (Windchill Quality Solutions 10.1 Desktop, Windchill Quality Solutions 10.1 Administrator, Windchill Quality Solutions 10.1 Web Access) you may have access to one or more applications.
Windchill Quality Solutions, the desktop version, is the cornerstone of the Windchill Quality Solutions suite. It is available in both the team and enterprise additions and is the feature rich windows application for all of your reliability and maintainability activities.
Available in the enterprise addition you will also find Windchill Quality Solutions Administrator which provides you options for administrative controls including options to support secure login.
Windchill Quality Solutions Web Access available specifically for Windchill FMEA infractions in the enterprise edition, allows you access for data entry, filtering, graphing, reporting and more.
Is there other Windchill Software for product data management and process management?
- Windchill MPMLink acts as an integral solution for Manufacturing Process Management.
- Windchill FlexPLM is a product lifecycle management solution that is widely used for retail, footwear & apparel and consumer product companies.
- Windchill Requirements Management is a combination of PTC’s Integrity product and Windchill PDMLink that manages product data software and hardware requirements.
- Windchill PPMLink is a program that provides portfolio management capabilities to discrete manufacturers.
- Windchill Service Information Manager creates associative, interactive service parts information used throughout a product’s serviceable lifecycle.
- Windchill Service Parts improves service operations by enabling service information to be organized and optimized for accuracy, applicability, and rich, graphics-driven delivery.
Want to see a PTC Windchill tutorial to see the software in action? Watch this on-demand video of Windchill’s basic software capabilities.
You can reduce time to market and cut costs by advancing your digital thread with PTC Windchill, the industry-leading Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. Windchill consolidates data so that your team can work faster and more accurately so you can focus on product innovation.
See how Virnig Manufacturing uses PTC Windchill to change the way their data is delivered within their organization.
Business Initiatives
Located in Rice, Minnesota, Virnig Manufacturing has been designing and producing skid steer attachments for over 27 years. This family owned one-stop shop does all steps of the manufacturing process in-house: engineering, cutting raw materials, machining, welding, and painting the finished product. Virnig dominates the industry by offering high-quality skid steer attachments and continually innovates to maintain a strong competitive advantage in a challenging and competitive market.
Business Challenges
Virnig has grown exponentially in the last decade, prompting the on-boarding of more employees to keep up with the growth. The expanding workforce introduced a new challenge of organizing critical work documents. The process of finding documents every day began to inhibit productivity. The need for a file management system became obvious and critical.
Finding a solution became a top priority as Darin Virnig, Engineering and Production Manager, and his team found themselves taking on projects that required “more time in a day” to complete. Darin stated, “When there were just a few of us looking at files we weren’t quite as concerned about file management and having things get overwritten. But as we had more and more people working we all looked at each other and decided it was time to implement a file management system so that we didn’t start losing data or have it changed accidentally.” Prior to implementing a system, Darin and his team kept product content and design data in large red binders throughout the manufacturing facility. Engineers would leave their workstations to access folders in designated areas – sometimes on the other side of the manufacturing floor. Virnig was losing precious time to their paper-based processes. Darin needed to find a quicker way for his team to access data if he wanted to achieve maximum productivity on the shop floor.
Solutions
EAC Product Development Solutions (EAC) is an engineering and technology services company headquartered in Burnsville, MN. They provide product development solutions that transform the way small to medium sized companies design, manufacture, connect, and service their products. Virnig had partnered with EAC to implement PTC’s simulation software and trusted them with this new file management challenge. PTC is a global technology provider and the maker of tools such as Creo Parametric CAD software and the Windchill line of product lifecycle management solutions. “It was only logical to go with PTC products since we have been doing all of our modeling with their products,” says Darin.
The benefits of going paperless exceeded Virnig’s accuracy and collaboration goals, and provide an ancillary benefit of reducing the cost of paper and printing. The decision was made to implement Windchill, PTC’s product lifecycle management software to streamline operations and control files.
The Paperless Movement
Windchill PDM Essentials, PTC’s Product Data Management tool empowers companies to organize and manage their product content to improve access to accurate, timely product data. Darin and his team have implemented Windchill across their engineering and manufacturing facility with 10 different access points for each department on the shop floor. Darin chuckles as he talks about removing the now-unnecessary red binders, “we took away their file cabinets.” The new process didn’t require any paper documents on the floor – everything was now digitally stored in their workstation computers throughout the facility. The implementation prevented wasted time that was previously used to sort through red binders, and avoided the use of old, irrelevant information.
Darin talks about the success of the new data management system, “Paperless provides access on the floor which has increased accuracy and quality that will give us the competitive advantage we were looking for.” He describes how his team members used to take over 30 minutes a day searching for the data needed to complete a specific task. “It was a company initiative to go paperless in all areas to increase accuracy – the accuracy is where the cost savings would come in for us.” Going paperless has allowed Virnig to take advantage of that 30 minutes a day to add over 325 productive hours to their operation each year.
Learn more about PTC Windchill, contact us, download the case study, or watch the video.
