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fj12001-Visitor
1-Visitor
August 8, 2017
Question

Windchill: Document Management

  • August 8, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 4452 views

Good morning all,

 

I am new to Windchill so please have patience with me.  We're on v10.1, and I have been asked to look into whether or not we can use it as a document management system for our IT, Systems, Vendor and Maintenance documentation.  I've used enterprise level EDM systems before and from what I've seen Windchill does not have many of the features I would expect, but it does have document version control which we want.   I understand it's more for projects and manufacturing and we use it for that at the moment. 

I would like to be able to store documents in a basic simple folder structure and then use a metadata search to pull them together by topic or by area or by system or by whatever I want, which really needs something like a keyworking facility.  Can Windchill do that?  We have a huge amount of documentation that whist not related to a single project, relates to the hardware and systems that the projects run on and  we want to get it into a central repository that is manageable and searchable. 

 

My view is that we probably need a proper EDM solution but want to explore what we already have first.  Any assistance greatly appreciated.

3 replies

avillanueva
23-Emerald I
avillanueva23-Emerald I
23-Emerald I
September 20, 2017

I was about to post a very similar question or poll to the world. How many Windchill installs are used for document management as well?  You mentioned that Windchill is different than the EDM systems you know of. Yes, its root are in Engineering and Manufacturing.  That being said, for those who have approached this from that side, you might see the slow trickle of documents into the system. A spec, procedure or standard here or there. References documents on BOMs.  At what point to you draw the line. Here, we have a core list of documents that have heavy relationships to the design and manufacture of our products.  That accounts for 80% of the documents in our traditional document system.  The remaining bulk are program memos and presentations. We have just brought in our AS9100D work instructions under the umbrella as a means to managed change control. 

 

So, where is that line? How do you stop the system from becoming a dumping ground of crap? My concern is that over time, the system will be littered with unreleased documents, fits and starts, scratch files, etc.  Please share your experience.

K
kschwartz10-Marble
10-Marble
September 20, 2017

We use Windchill PDM Link mostly for Document and CAD Management.  We store our all our documenation and CAD docs in the libraries.  We process workflows for review and and release of documenation with revision history, etc. 

Z
zgodula11-Garnet
11-Garnet
October 20, 2017

We use it for this as well, and we also use it for Change Control and Issuing our Parts and BOMs to our Oracle system.

D
dharlan-21-Visitor
1-Visitor
October 25, 2017

Yes you can use it to manage documents. Easily. But you have to configure it so that you can do the things you want/expect it to do.

 

I'm not sure what features you expect or what "keyworking facility" is, but if you can explain then we can help you more.

 

So, what I would expect you to need to do is to define the different types of documents that you want to store (say; marketing materials, HR policies, engineering documents, procedures, quality reports, etc). Then you have to ask yourself for each of these what; metadata/attributes does each have? what is the access control/permissions for each (and for each group or type of user)? Are these related to products (i.e. are we going to use wtParts and are these documents related to those)? How are these documents managed or revised (revision sequence, promotion or change process and approvals & routings needed, etc)? What are the magor lifecycle stages of each of these types? (draft, review, released, obsolete, etc)

 

Then you just have to configure the system accordingly and since you can search on metadata and report on relationships etc you have what you need.

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