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Ninjette1-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 5, 2010
Question

Maintain Windchill

  • May 5, 2010
  • 4 replies
  • 8141 views
Does anybody know where I can find some guidance on what it takes to maintain Windchill (or Arbortext Content Manager)? How many heads? What skill-set?

4 replies

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lfraley1-Visitor
1-Visitor
August 10, 2010

This sounds like a scoping question. Talk to a qualified Arbortext services partner: http://www.squidoo.com/arbortext

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ShawnLothrop1-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 2, 2010

PTC has published a Windchill system maintenance and monitoring checklist technical brief on the Windchill Installation and Configuration Resource Page located here.

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MarcHendrickson1-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 9, 2010

It all depend on the depth of your install and how fast you wish to install, upgrade and complete next phase PDM implementations.

To give you an idea, at our company we use PDM as a data storage wharehouse for ProE, Micro Station, MS Word & Excel. We also use configured/custom promotion request workflows for our change management, no configuration management at this time. In addition we use Product View, MatchCAD, Mechanica, ISODraw & Relex, PTC Products. We have approx. 50 ProE user and approx. 150 total PDM user throughout the company.

We migrated from Intralink 3.4 to PDM 8.0 3 years ago. At the time we utilized Fishbowl Solutions to help implement, migrate and complete the initial traning.

We have 1 IT individual 5%-10% time commitment on for network, server OS & services and backups for PDM related ongoing support.

I administer to all users for training, PDM Admin & PDM Business Admin, upgrades, troubleshooting all PTC product issues along with any daily, weekly or monthly upkeep and administer to our maintenance agreements. Our consulting group helped start us on the right foot and trained us to be sustain ourselves.

In addition I am working on next generation PDM projects and manage our configuration management group. Obviously it is all time permitting based on issues that come up, but our system is very stable.

That all said with approx 10 years experience with Windchill I would like to have 1 or 2 more resources to offset current workload so we could implement faster more of the PDM functionality but we make due just fine.

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Ninjette1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
October 8, 2010

Liz, Shawn, and Marc,

Thank you all for your input as well.

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BobLehman1-Visitor
1-Visitor
October 6, 2010

I put the attached spreadsheet together a while back to help address this question for a customer. You might find it usefule. If you have any comments or feedback please let me know.

--Bob

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    Ninjette1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    October 7, 2010

    Bob,

    Can I say *W-O-W*! That is precisely what I've been needing. This is incredible. I can't thank you enough. Questions:

    1. What is CAD Admin? Is it for the PDMLink and Project Link?

    2. Business Admin: How large of a user base is this number based on? How many objects/doctypes in ACM?

    3. Training: Is this based on updates/upgrades?

    Again, thank you sooo much!

    B
    BobLehman1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    October 7, 2010

    Jodi,

    Glad you liked it and found it helpful. I have many other things I would like to add to it, but have not found the time. It based on an implementation supporting approximatly 30 ME's and 150-200 overall users. Without getting to specific there are 70K Parts and another 100K documents.

    1. What is CAD Admin?

    - We have a separate person who is a senior ME who spends most of his time now on the Windchill implementation. Helping the rest of the Engineers out when they run into issues. Resolving issues that involve Windchill and Proe - publishing problems are a good example - some are Windchill, but they are often issues with the model itself. They are also the backup for the System and Business Admin. The System Admin, CAD Admin and Business Admin cover for each other when one of the other roles is not being filled that day - vacation, sick days ....

    1a. Is it for the PDMLink and Project Link?

    - We are currently just running PDMLink - we have ProjectLink, but it is currently not heavily used.

    2. Business Admin: How large of a user base is this number based on?

    - ~150 moving to ~200

    How many objects/doctypes in ACM?

    - Approximatly 100K and growing

    3. Training: Is this based on updates/upgrades?

    - Initial Users, refreshers after updates or upgrades - anything that would change the user experience enough to warrant it. As will as continued development of work aids.

    I have posted this to the PTCUser exploder before, but this seems like it might be a better place to keep it and keep track of what else people want to see.

    If you are reading this thread, please let me know of additional items you would like to see added to this spreadsheet. Ideas that I have or others have suggested include:

    1. Links to appropriate documentation - ones we have created or PTC Material

    2. Multipliers based on - small, medium and Large implementations - these numbers are based on a medium sized implementation

    3. More depth added to the Roles - tasks, descriptions - whatever might be needed to make the tasks more understandable

    4. Tools used

    5. ??? Please add to the list

    --Bob

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