The right fit: PTC offers SMBs multiple options for product life-cycle management

Small and medium size businesses (SMB) are becoming significant users of the Windchill product life-cycle management (PLM) application from PTC. The company says SMBs contributed mightily to the momentum that resulted in PTC reporting record revenues from Windchill sales in the fourth quarter of its 2007 fiscal year.

By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff December 20, 2007

Small and medium size businesses (SMB) are becoming significant users of the Windchill product life-cycle management (PLM) application from PTC . In fact, the company says SMBs contributed mightily to the momentum that resulted in PTC reporting record revenues from Windchill sales in the fourth quarter of its 2007 fiscal year.

Windchill helps companies manage and configure complete product development content, and optimize the broad set of product development processes necessary to bring products to market and manage them over the entire lifecycle.

Solutions like Windchill initially were used primarily by large enterprises with large product development teams and the resources to purchase expensive applications. Recently, however, even SMBs are operating globally dispersed product development teams, and PLM vendors have responded by finding ways of making their solutions easier to use and more affordable.

The on-demand deployment model is one strategy vendors have employed to that end. PTC now offers the option of adopting Windchill in either the on-demand or on-premise mode.

Vette Corp ., a Manchester, N.H.-based provider of custom heat sinks and thermal solutions for leading OEMs in the computer and industrial electronics industries, chose the on-demand model. Vette’s product development teams include design and application engineers in North America and Asia, and manufacturing teams in China and Taiwan.

“The on-demand deployment option enables us to focus on our core product development competencies, resulting in reduced rework and shortened product development cycles with minimal investment,” says Dan Price, technical sales engineer, Vette Corp. “Windchill provides a single repository that any team member worldwide can access to get the correct version of a model or documentation at any time.”

Tribotek focuses on the design, development, and manufacture of innovative high-density power and data connectors. It adopted an on-premise version of Windchill after realizing that its lack of data management capabilities often resulted in multiple copies of the same part in different locations. The company is located in Burlington, Mass. with design, manufacturing and sales teams spread across the U.S. and China. Tribotek required a data management solution that provided a centralized data vault for controlling and storing all product data, the ability to easily share the most recent product content among its worldwide product development organization and control of key change and lifecycle management processes. PTC Windchill proved to be the right solution. “It has been essential in providing accessibility of accurate product information to our worldwide product development, manufacturing, and sales teams,” said Greg Mark, manager, engineering, Tribotek. “With PTC Windchill our worldwide product development team will can able quickly find and access the most recent product information.”