Staffing to support Windchill

[srector]

I apologize if this is an old topic, but so far my searches have been less than fruitful.

We are trying to justify to our management why weneedtwo full-time Windchill administrators when, in their minds, this is just another IT tool that our IT department should be able to support part-time.

I was wondering how other companies have staffed to support Windchill, how they have justified that to their management, and also whether there is any information from PTC that discusses the kind of support required.

Thanks!

Steve

[MikeLockwood]

To add a little fuel to the discussion...


1. We consider Windchill to be primarily an Engineering tool, even as we grow the system to serve more and more users in more functional areas. It is budgeted by, paid for, administered and supported completely by Engineering (R&D) here, with essentially no IT involvement. The same group that administers Windchill also administers all CAD tools and engineering processes, best practices, standards, macros, mapkeys, etc., etc. for engineering productivity. The group is staffed with experienced engineers responsible for engineering productivity and accountable to the project engineering teams. The same people who configure workflow processes and create query builder reports, and configure ACL's also teach Pro/Engineer courses in-house for example.



2. Planning for, implementing, administering and supporting Windchill of requires a huge and complex set of IT knowledge, skills and procedural activities. However, the engineering team is responsible for finding ways to obtain these, rather than assigning the system to IT people who do not understand what engineering needs; at its core, the accountability is that we help make engineers more productive (while also facilitating making those who use the results of engineering more productive where possible).


3. Ongoing process development and improvement (such as deciding exactly what attributes to use and what workflow routing to use for change management, along with what user groups and associated permissions to assign, what reports to make available, etc., etc.) are planned, considered and reviewed along with other engineering activities, not with IT projects.

So, the paradigm shift needed may be from "administering Windchill" to "using software to continually improve engineering productivity" along with shifting the budget from IT to engineering.

[LewisLawrence]

In Reply to Steven Rector:

I apologize if this is an old topic, but so far my searches have been less than fruitful.

We are trying to justify to our management why weneedtwo full-time Windchill administrators when, in their minds, this is just another IT tool that our IT department should be able to support part-time.

I was wondering how other companies have staffed to support Windchill, how they have justified that to their management, and also whether there is any information from PTC that discusses the kind of support required.

Thanks!

Steve

Steven,

Windchill support staff requirement is really a “how long is a piece of string” question, it is impossible to answer without knowing things like.

• What Windchill functionality you use?


• How many users?


• How much data your system is managing?


• How much activity the users generate?


• What availability does the system require (E.G. 24/7)?

One thing is certain, whoever your implementation is managed by, there needs to be someone in charge who understands:

• Windchill functionality


• The data to be managed


• The hardware requirements for your installation


• Your Engineering processes


• What your business needs, particularly downstream users

The IT or Engineering debate is really irrelevant if you have individuals involved who tick the right boxes. As a sweeping generalisation in my experience few IT folks understand Engineering procedures and few Engineering folks understand application back end hardware. Clearly to have a successful Windchill implementation (depending on scale) you need both skill sets.

My team are in the corporate IT cost centre. As such we are a shared service and report to “the business”. In practice that means we are answerable to Engineering and IT management, and most of the team comes from an Engineering background. We all fall into that unusual mixed skillset category that seems common for Engineering systems staff, particularly those around Windchill administration.

There is a sizing guide for hardware, but I don’t think there is anything that covers staffing requirements. Hopefully someone will reply if there is.
-----

Lewis

[SteveVinyard]

I've seen the benefits and lack of in many companies. I think Lewis is right in that you need to really define things.

A general rules, I see things as such. If you are wanting to use the tool as an enterprise tool and not just as a fancy data management tool...then you need a guy.

The proverbial "guy" needs to be a hybrid of IT and Engineering/Manufacturing in a best case scenario. Having a guy gives you the following benefits:

(forgive the grammar, just typing this out quickly)


1- Improved ROI

a. Faster implementation - cheaper if the "guy" can do it all

b. Quicker/easier/better user adoption - this is huge

c. Quicker maturity of your users, business process and how to meet your needs in Windchill

i. You can expand the software's uses much quicker without having to pay for a consultant

2- System displacement

a. A guy can creatively use Windchill in many ways giving you the ability to displace other systems thus reducing you IT staff or workload, hardware, expertise, maintenance costs and licensing. (this is politically touchy I know people who have cut their IT budget from 425K down to 150K doing just this.)

3- Cut Consulting Costs and keep up with newer software

a. You don't have to pay someone to do all of the software updates, upgrades, maintenance updates and critical patches

b. You get to advance to the newer software, setup a nice demo server for users to pre-train on new software and generally create smoother rollout without the consulting costs.

4- Continual User Training - Custom training

a. A guy can constantly train and develop custom training materials that fit company needs

b. A guy can constantly mentor less technical users to use the software in new areas.

5- Resource Leverage

a. A guy will have the experience to handle issues more quickly by leveraging resources in the community, internal to PTC and tech support. Learning to "manage" PTC tech support is a fine art.


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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer