PLM Software: What it is and Why You Need it

From design to manufacturing, product development is a dynamic process. Manufacturers often overlook inefficient management of product data.

Workers often struggle to organize data making it difficult to communicate design changes to other team members effectively. This bottleneck can detrimentally affect efficiency, product quality, and troubleshooting.

Data professionals spend more of their time governing, searching, and preparing data than on extracting value.

Product lifecycle management software, or PLM, manages product development data and helps govern how that data is shared. Manufacturers use PLM software to increase their productivity, optimize product quality, and reduce the time to market for a new product. This enables efficient and location-independent collaboration between a manufacturer’s various departments. If you were to compare product development to the human body, PLM would be its nervous system. Each department or “organ” has a different purpose, but each one must communicate (although in different ways and capacities) back and forth between one another to ensure everything is running smoothly.

Even though data discovery and integrity are essential for business, 30-50% of organizations are not where they want to be.

Although there are several PLM software packages on the market, PTC PLM Software, known as Windchill, offers your organization the greatest competitive edge.

Windchill PLM: What It Can Do for You

PTC PLM Software Features

PTC PLM software possesses a variety of unique features designed to simplify processes across product development. New features have been added, and existing ones improved in the latest release, Windchill 12:

    • ThingWorx Navigate: This platform enables quick and easy access to product data for all members of your organization. It leverages out-of-the-box role and task-based apps that expedite searching for data without the need for training.
    • Closed-Looped Quality Implementation: System integrations offer proof of traceability to find and address design issues early. This is made possible through tight OSLC integration with the PTC toolchain and third-party requirements management tools.
    • Creo View: Embedded in PTC Windchill, Creo View allows users to easily compare CAD designs and identify changes quickly.
    • Advanced Bill of Material (BOM) Tools: These tools allow manufacturing engineers to view and address upstream changes that impact downstream manufacturing.

PTC PLM Software Benefits

PTC Windchill enables your organization to:

    • Rapidly access crucial product data more easily
    • Improve collaboration
    • Optimize Bill of Materials management
    • Detect and address design issues sooner

Having access to product information is crucial for ensuring effective teamwork and cross-discipline collaboration. However, simply accessing the data one needs can take a significant amount of time and resources.

Data professionals are wasting 30% of their time because they cannot find, protect or prepare data.

PTC PLM Software helps eliminate this hassle of endlessly sifting through data. Thanks to new and improved features such as ThingWorx Navigate, members of your organization can quickly and easily access whatever they are looking for. Individuals with little or no CAD experience can use Creo View 7 to track design changes of your product and stay in the loop without having to consult other departments. And when changes to a product are made upstream by designers, manufacturing engineers can easily view and address these changes using Windchill’s advanced Bill of Material tools.

PTC PLM Software: Addition by Subtraction

Although important, innovation alone cannot guarantee success. Proper data management, effective collaboration, and promptly addressing issues make all the difference. PTC Windchill is the industry leader of PLM software and will ensure your organization avoids the bottlenecks and wasted time associated with improper data management.
Interested in learning more about how PTC Windchill can make your organization run more efficiently? Contact us.