WIndchill Product Analytics (WPA): Where to go in the future now that it's being retired?

[ScottMorris]

Hi,

Curious to find out what other Windchill Product Analytics (WPA) customers are planning for their future material, compliance and cost needs knowing that PTC has no plans to update or support this application suite beyond Windchill 11.1?

We are currently working with WPA Cost and would love to install WPA Material compliance, but it makes no sense now that PTC is retiring this critical component of their PLM solution. One of the given suggestions is to build a custom application with ThingWorx, but there's really no appetite for this internally. We don't want to go back custom applications, we'd prefer to stay with a COTS solution.

Has anyone researched other cost, material or compliance solutions from other vendors? Do any of them have an integration to Windchill or at least work with extracted data rehosted in an external DB?

-Scott

[flamy]

Scott,

PTC is still committed to maintaining WPA for existing customers , but with limited investment in this solution, the focus is primarily with maintaining the regulations and staying current.  

For customers with more sophisticated compliance needs, we have a new partnership in place with Assent Compliance, a global leader in this domain.  We have customers using Assent with WPA for data collection, combined with WPA to address regulations not supported by WPA, and also customers using Assent directly for all of their material compliance needs.  For this use case, Assent is currently working with our help on an integration with Windchill.

For costing we have multiple partners providing solution including some Navigate based solution with FACTON.  Some of our customers and PTC service organization have developed Navigate based apps for cost roll-up. You can find an example at  https://www.ptc.com/en/products/plm/everyday-innovation/innovator-spotlight-polaris/polaris-plm-demonstrations

Regards

~ Francois

[ptc-4184081]

Hello Scott,

When you say you will maintain WPA for existing customers, do you intend to still release updates for RoHS and REACH specs?

Thank you,

Anahid

[flamy]

YEs we are still doing it for all the regulations we support for customers under maintenance.

~ Francois

[ptc-4184081]

Thank you for the fast response, Francois (not Scott!).

You just made my life a lot simpler. 

Anahid

[dglenn]

I'm now hearing your retiring the application for good Q1 2022.

That would have been a better message in 2018 given the time it takes to undo and re-platform several years of work.

[ScottMorris]

Choices for compliance are Assent and Compliance Map, we went with CMAP.

There were not a lot of choices for cost, we went with 3C Software's ImpactECS.

CMAP is fully integrated with our Windchill application and we are just starting the ImpactECS integration now.

CMAP was great to work with an offers an excellent solution with great data acquisition services. ImpactECS has completely changed the company's ability to input, manage, roll up and report on costs.

To be honest, we're not missing WPA any more and actively digging into the details on how to remove all the user and admin visible items since there is no uninstall button for WPA. Once complete, we can start planning our move from WC11.1 to WC12.0.2

[dglenn]

Thanks @ScottMorris, We'll add your suggestion to our replacement project.

[flamy]

Please check the 

WC Product Analytics Retirement FAQ

on PTC.COM 

[flamy]

Hi Dan,

The Environmental Compliance market has become increasingly complex as changes to REACH, ROHS, Conflict Minerals, and reporting standards are being updated at an ever-increasing pace. Recently, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) introduced a new reporting SCIP database for REACH, and IPC created a corresponding new data exchange standard IPC-1752B.  We had  no plans to support these  new standards with Windchill Product Analytics, and earlier this year  have made a strategic decision to retire Windchill Product Analytics.

You can find more information on PTC.COM  WC Product Analytics Retirement FAQ 

~ Francois 

[Marco_Tosin]

Last week we went live with the integration between ACM (Assent Compliance Manager) and Windchill 11.1

Colleagues who follow REACH and RoHS certifications have been using ACM for a year, but now the two applications are integrated, in a bidirectional way, for material master data and BOM.

My colleagues who follow ACM are available to share their experiences with other users of the community who consider it appropriate.

[Marco_Tosin]

Today I read this article from PTC support and I was wondering if, the answers it contains, are from questions asked by some users who have read this community discussion.

I think it would be a great idea to start a group, here in the community, that could include both PTC customers who have are already using ACM (Assent Compliance Manager) and those who are interested in learning more about its integration possibilities with Windchill.

My colleagues who are already working on ACM, which we have already integrated with Windchill since some weeks, are @Luca_Moresco and @SZ_10267848