Networking and More

Attendees heard about the exciting new enhancements in Creo 4.0 in the area of MDB & 2D detailing.

Drawings have been the mainstay of engineering communication and production control since the 18th Century, and many engineering processes still revolve around the principles established through drawing control. Today's leading manufacturing companies are transforming their process from drawing-centric to part-centric, shifting information from drawings into Windchill in order to alleviate bottlenecks and the chore of multiple data entry inherent in a drawing-centric process. In this session, the presenter shared best practices for managing essential information such as Bills of Material in a part-centric approach.

A well-tuned system is critical for companies to derive value from using Windchill. This session shared information on how best to deploy and tune a Windchill system. The presenter provided tips and techniques on how to monitor, troubleshoot and fix performance problems when they arise.

Updates in ISO 9001:2015 emphasize traceability, collaboration, and risk management throughout the product development process. In this session, attendees learned about harmonized product development and quality processes in Windchill that enable companies in highly regulated industries like medical devices to address ISO 9001:2015 updates with one PLM solution. With capabilities to manage changes throughout the product lifecycle, to trace the impact of those changes in quality feedback systems, and to address quality issues with not just corrective measures but preventive ones supported throughout the design and development process. Windchill meets the recommendations of the new standard to close the loop on product quality and product development.

Finding the perfect method for managing and synchronizing your ECAD, MCAD and Windchill library data synchronization can take a village! While collaboration benefits sound great, the devil, as they say, is in the details. For both ECAD-MCAD collaboration and ECAD-Windchill integration, component libraries must be separately created and maintained. However to work effectively, the associated libraries and meta data must be merged. This panel discussion which included a customer and ECAD vendor discuss how to approach each of the above, what was learned during implementation and their future plans.

Business rules and workflow enhancements can streamline otherwise complicated processes, reducing delays and excess work. Panelists from AGCO, NASA, TE Connectivity and Raytheon shared ways they have used business rules to tackle challenging change management, configuration management and data management processes and how you can apply these tactics within your own organization.

Attendees learned about the exciting new enhancements in Creo 4.0 in the area of cabling, piping and schematics.

During PTC University training classes, instructors learn about the daily challenges of PTC customers and discuss solutions to their specific problems. Very often, these challenges are not unique - there are many questions that are being asked repeatedly. During this session the presenter did a deep dive around working with complex models and large assemblies. The presenter discussed the most frequently asked questions from his Creo classes and suggested useful tips to improve productivity. Topics included how to run simple structural analysis and fast ways to conduct part level editing while in assemblies.

The presenter discussed how they were able to build the first 5-axis 3D-printed electronic tool by integrating nine hardware and software components: Konica-Minolta Range 7 3D laser scanner, Keyence laser distance sensor, Rapidform XOR3 software, Creo 3.0 Parametric, Creo 3.0 Manufacturing, Haas OM2A CNC Office Mill, Norson/EFD dispenser/print head and controller and Spectra Physics sintering laser. The presenter shared why the Creo product was the main key that made this printing tool integration possible. And with the Creo Manufacturing tool loaded with so many features, all types of printing was done seamlessly with minimum effort. From this effort, the presenter demonstrated how Creo Parametric and Creo Manufacturing can be the standard printing software for the 3D-printed electronics field by doing both substractive and additive manufacturing. Finally, the presenter demonstrated how Creo software and Haas CNC can be used as a pick-and-place machine to place electrical component on

Multiple views of a single source of truth for product data can be represented by the "xBOM" in Windchill. Maintaining a single source of truth for product data and processes across a product's lifecycle - spanning engineering (eBOM), manufacturing (mBOM), and service (sBOM) - helps companies share data across these disparate teams, ensures  teams do not get out of synch with changes and needs from one another, enhances collaboration to improve quality, and speeds time-to-market. The presenter shared how powerful new capabilities in Windchill 11 enhance the connections between each view of the BOM, flagging changes from one group to the next, and offering a highly intuitive, visual user experience to transform one bill of materials to another;  enabling this powerful collaboration that leverages a single source of truth for the product's "xBOM" throughout the lifecycle.

With so many internal IT systems used throughout the product lifecycle, how do you ensure that valuable information from a product’s design, manufacture, and service doesn’t get stuck in data silos, inaccessible to the very stakeholders who need it most? The navigate product offers one, simple, intuitive system of engagement that is as easy to use as the average smartphone app. It delivers product data from across multiple systems of record, like PLM, ALM, SLM, MES, CRM, legacy systems, and more. Out-of-the-box apps launched in December with Windchill 11 deliver PLM data to any stakeholder throughout your company who needs it, while offering easy and flexible tailoring, attractive subscription-based pricing, and extensibility to more data sources across your enterprise – including smart, connected products. By attending this session attendees learned more about the navigate product and saw a demonstration of the apps in action!

What is the next step in your business transformation? The Tuesday ISG keynote explored, the opportunities afforded by IoT and continuing innovations in this digital age are vast, and growing exponentially. What steps will your company take next across its engineering, manufacturing, and service teams to realize new business value from these growing opportunities?  A panel of business leaders in engineering, manufacturing, and service organizations from PTC’s top customers discussed their own journeys of transformation to realizing new levels of business value in this increasingly digital age.

Daktronics identified the lack of a classification system as being one of the root causes  of organizational waste the company wanted to address in their PLM Deployment. The session discussed the Daktronics journey on how they deployed their classification system. The presenters discussed the number of  adjustments made to the scope and the development of the strategy, some of the challenges of dealing with free format text data, and the unique ideas identify to achieve organizational visibility and traction.

The session discussed the top ten improvements made to Windchill from an administrator’s perspective. The presenter discussed both the system and business administrative areas including promotion tools, application clustering and high availability, system monitoring, performance advisor, user administration and reporting.

As GE is becoming a Digital Industrial company, digital thread and product lifecycle management are becoming essential. Establishing a digital thread from the Mechanical/Electrical CAD BOMs to the Engineering BOM and through to the Manufacturing BOM in a Multi-CAD environment is a tricky business. The presenters walked through the GE Aviation Systems implementation of a BOM management solution. The session provided an overview of how GE Aviation Systems has begun to establish the digital thread including an overview of an internally developed tool to enable a digital thread solution without breaking the production processes. In addition to these learning objectives, the presenters presented a roadmap including details on current and future implementations (ECAD management, MCAD management and linkages to eBOMs.).

Whirlpool has strategically acquired companies to achieve product leadership in the home appliance domain. Recent acquisitions and a joint venture have resulted in integrating 3 different CAD platforms and PLM systems in Whirlpool’s native Creo and Windchill PLM platform. By attending this session attendees heard how Whirlpool approached this integration by analyzing various approaches and options in CAD interoperability so they could successfully devise an approach and methodology to handle current requirements and take care of anticipated future integrations.

PTC is expanding capabilities to process our customer’s data to proactively send solutions, predict where problems may occur, and prevent issues from happening at all. The result is products are more stable and PTC Product Users are more productive. How is this possible? This session discussed how PTC is bringing data analytics and machine learning to their products.

The presenters discussed how the architecture design process is a core element of the product development process at MAN Truck & Bus AG. During this design process phase, the technical concept responding to the functional specification takes shape, and the product structure is completed and enriched with its contents. As all of MAN’s products are configured from a consequently designed modular kit, the variants are based on this product architecture.

Windchill 11is the first production-ready enterprise solution launched by PTC that is powered by ThingWorx to deliver new capabilities beyond any other PLM offering on the marketplace: to create smart, connected products and to leverage the information they generate. In this practical, technology-driven session, the presenter examined why IoT is PLM and how new technologies and services both offered in Windchill 11 today and in-work in our R&D are delivering on this promise. This session showcased  "concept  apps" demonstrating powerful engineering use cases that connect PLM with the IoT.

All companies need to manage contracts for contractors, suppliers, and vendors. Windchill ProjectLink, along with Security Labels and Agreements, can manage this easily, safely, and collaboratively. To properly manage contracts, contract documents must be safely stored and have controlled access. The presenter shared how Windchill ProjectLink provides these capabilities out-of-the-box and discussed how Windchill ProjectLink can provide subscriptions to document changes or as contract nears closures. Plus can easily modify process workflows for contract creation, modifications, and closure. Throw in Security Labels and Agreements, and the presenter shared how you can now have all outside parties’ access the same location without fear of unintentional information release. Agreements can also provide date controlled access to the appropriate documents.

Models in Creo have all sorts of uses during the design process, from concept ideas, analysis simplifications, and manufacturing process development.  All of these may require a new model state for the released object. Assembly level cuts also introduce additional complexity to the design cycle. This session discussed how Solar Turbines is using Creo Apps along with Windchill to manage and release files using a "Derivative Model"  procedure. The procedure allows for design, engineering, manufacturing and others to share a base model, identify and make changes without the design model being modified, but with traceability of the changes being made.

Schneider Electric deployed Creo Parametric 2.0 to 1200+ users in 4 months, compared to eight months for Windchill  5. The foundation was based on a single PLM update, SCCM distribution for client installations, progress tracking, LMS for eLearning, in class eLearning coaching, learning connector and monitoring the progress of usage.  After 1 month of pilot executions, a small set of improvements were rapidly set and distributed before mass deployment started, allowing Schneider Electric to achieve higher business unit satisfaction.  The central administration tool helped in managing deployment progress. Attendees at this session learned how Schneider Electric central administration tool allows to configure and start multiple versions of Creo (wildfire 5 / Creo), using the correct license server and localized custom settings based in the location. The presenters discussed the quick selection of environments (development, pre-production, production and training) for Creo

Attendees learned about the exciting new enhancements in Creo 4.0 helping design, build and optimize smart, connected products.

The service parts business of any OEM offers great opportunities to drive customer loyalty as well as high-margin revenue growth.  PTC’s Servigistics solutions deliver tremendous value by optimizing parts inventory, pricing strategies and results. Barkawi Management Consultants broke down 5 key factors that can help maximize the value of a PTC SLM investment.   With a PTC practice that consists of many former Servigistics executives and engineers with collective experience in over 100 successful Servigistics projects, our experts guided you through how to generate the fastest and best results possible from PTC SLM solutions.

According to CIO Magazine, “as many as 71% of software projects that fail do so because of poor requirements management, making it the single biggest reason for project failure”. Is your company best-in-class when it comes to managing product requirements?   This session explored common challenges and best practices for managing requirements in Windchill environments. Attendees also learned how Windchill customers can manage requirements in Integrity Lifecycle Manager and trace them directly to their product data in order to create a single source of truth for rich requirements data that can be linked to products or parts throughout the product lifecycle.