Windchill 12: New Features and Improvements in Windchill 12

Windchill 12 was recently released – so if you’re on the fence about upgrading – here’s why we think you should.

Remember, if you’re up to date on maintenance, you can upgrade for no additional cost. You might as well get all the benefits you can from your technology investment.

This Windchill 12 upgrade focuses on four target areas of new features and improvements to existing features. These four areas expand into hundreds of high-value enhancements across the platform. Let’s look at what’s in store for you after upgrading to Windchill 12.

Windchill 12 Improvements

Closed-Loop Quality

Quality is one of the most important determinants of manufacturing success. Quality control ultimately improves customer satisfaction, reduces costs, and increases adherence to schedule requirements. Windchill 12 recognizes the increasing importance of quality to manufacturing success and makes it easier for users to uncover design issues early in the process, which reduces costs and helps ensure faster time to market. Windchill 12 improves the ability to respond rapidly to adverse events with its new proof of traceability feature which works through tight integration with OSLC. Windchill 12 also allows users to identify changes in the view states of new products to manage critical-to-quality product design characteristics.

Windchill 12 includes a new traceability feature to help teams respond quickly to adverse events.

Improved Collaboration and Access to Product Data

Windchill 12 improves collaboration across the enterprise and the entire supply chain by providing wider and deeper access to product data. Through integration with HIS and Silicon Expert, among many others, new extensions simplify risk assessment, component sourcing, and part selection. Customers can also work with enhanced APL and AML information to streamline sourcing and ensure quality standards are met.

Enhancements to existing integrations with CATIA and Solidworks simplify sharing information and designs across internal teams as well as external stakeholders. Highly configurable out-of-the-box extensions and apps add to the ease of collaboration and data access.

Concurrent Manufacturing

Customers demand unique product configurations but maintaining all the possible combinations on the factory floor has been difficult. Windchill 12 provides continuity using a digital thread between the design and the information on the shop floor, so engineers can quickly see and reconcile changes to manufacturing and plant-specific BOMS.

Configuring products is also simpler with Windchill 12’s feature that identifies user-selected and rule-driven items in a configuration, so users can understand the source of items on a custom BOM.

Windchill 12 also includes many additional enhancements to BOM visualization and maintenance, including the ability to use many raw materials and semi-finished items in a BOM, and direct modeling of BOMs from Creo will help companies deal quickly and effectively with supply chain interruptions, evolving safety regulations, and time-to-market concerns.

Windchill 12 supports new concurrent manufacturing needs with digital thread tools built right in.

Digital Deployment

Windchill offers flexible deployment options, including cloud-based and on-premise choices, making it easy to deal with the reality of shifting workforce requirements. And with its commitment to openness and standards compliance, integrating Windchill with other enterprise applications, whether from PTC or not, is easier than ever. Administrators have terrific new tools to plan and execute upgrades from previous releases, so the company achieves a value return on its investment rapidly.

New Windchill 12 Features

Reporting

A new reporting capability, Windchill Business Reporting, adds to the existing capabilities within Windchill and provides richer layout and formatting support so users can grasp information at a glance.

Documentation Support

Windchill 12 also enables thumbnails published to Arbortext for use in documentation or service manuals, helping to reduce the need to maintain diagrams, schematics, or other documentation in multiple locations. Simplifying document maintenance reduces the cost of maintaining documents and improves quality by reducing the likelihood of errors. When incorporated into service and repair manuals, this capability can reduce the time to complete service calls and repairs, resulting in lower costs and happier customers.

Windchill 12 integrates with Arbortext to create and maintain core product documentation.

Multi-body Design

Multi-body design tools enable users to complete tasks quickly and make designs easier to maintain and modify as necessary and includes the critical requirements of Stochastic and custom lattices to enable efficient additive manufacturing operations. Windchill 12 also includes an improved augmented reality (AR) workflow publication process that enables rapid deployment and reduces the need for user training and tedious document editing.

Is Windchill 12 Right for Your Manufacturing Company?

While only you can decide what’s right for your operation, Windchill 12 offers state of the art functionality, flexible deployment, and easy integration. If you are already using Windchill, upgrading is a no-brainer—it’s that good. If you’re looking for a new PLM system, Windchill should be at the top of your list. Quadrant Knowledge Solutions named Windchill the technology leader in the most recent Market Outlook on PLM products. Windchill has been at the forefront of PLM capabilities since its first release back in 1998, and it has remained a leader for the entire time.

If you would like to learn more about Windchill 12 and the benefits it can bring to your organization, contact us today for information or a free demo.