New Windchill Module Delivers Turnkey Integration To Connect PLM With ERP
Dramatically reduces the time, cost, and risk of interoperability with SAP
NEEDHAM, Mass., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- PTC (NASDAQ:PMTC), The Product Development Company(TM), today announced it has added a new module to its Windchill(R) 7.0 suite called Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration (ESI). As part of PTC's industry-leading Product Development System, Windchill ESI helps manufacturers better coordinate the exchange of product and complementary manufacturing and supply chain-related information between the Windchill-based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and ERP, CRM, and SCM systems. By providing not only the technology but also the mapping and process coordination, Windchill ESI goes beyond other offerings and delivers a turnkey module for immediate business value. The first release supports SAP with support for other systems to follow.
"Manufacturing companies today have many IT applications that often require the same information to successfully execute their specific business processes," states Pierre Fricke, EVP DH Brown Associates, Inc, a leading market research and consulting firm. "Meeting quality and time-to-market objectives requires connecting PLM with ERP, SCM, and CRM in a synchronized fashion. This can be daunting for the average company."
Many manufacturers have manual data reentry processes or point-to-point integrations that require extensive customization to map data and coordinate processes. Historically these methods have been slow and unreliable, leading to product quality issues such as manufacturing producing products using outdated engineering data.
"PLM and ERP systems both play critical, but distinctly unique roles for today's manufacturer," said James Heppelmann, Chief Product Officer and EVP, PTC. "Compromising on either introduces unnecessary risk for manufacturers, so delivering a robust turnkey interoperability solution between them with strong transactional integrity and reporting has been a priority for PTC. Windchill ESI is much more than just a basic integration framework, saving manufacturers months of otherwise-needed development time to establish the seamless synchronization of information between PLM and ERP."
Windchill ESI - Turnkey Interoperability with SAP
In its first release, Windchill ESI makes it easy for companies to support the release-to-manufacturing process with SAP 4.6c. Windchill ESI includes user interfaces and configurable business process templates for generating and sharing packages of released parts, bills-of-material (BOM), documents, and engineering change notices (ECN) with one or more SAP instances. The process templates include the integration business logic as well as manage transaction and error reporting. Windchill ESI also makes it possible for Windchill to access relevant information in other enterprise systems without duplicating it, including supplier details, part cost data, and inventory status. The end result is a dramatic reduction in the time, cost, and risk associated with the integration.
"We're excited about the release of the Windchill ESI solution," said Timothy Saja, Windchill Program Director at Unisys Corporation. "It is a well architected solution and will give us a framework for multiple integrations with MRP and ERP systems as well as to our legacy systems. We expect to see significant benefit from the turnkey capabilities that Windchill ESI provides. It will allow us to decrease the time required for integration implementations, streamline our design-to-production processes and reduce deployment costs."
Partnership with TIBCO
Windchill ESI bundles industry leading integration software provided by TIBCO, the leading independent business integration provider. By using TIBCO technology as a base for the Windchill ESI offering, customers have access to a large suite of pre-built application and technology adapters, as well as TIBCO's first-rate business integration environment.
"The combination of TIBCO and Windchill ESI is a great win for manufacturers in today's highly competitive marketplace," said Steve Dischinger, director of OEM programs, TIBCO Software Inc. "The connection between PLM and the rest of the enterprise is a critical link in getting the right information to the right people to deliver the right product. With the out of the box functionality of Windchill ESI and TIBCO, we are delivering on customer's needs for less risk and lower total cost of ownership."
PTC plans to add additional turnkey integrations to Windchill ESI for other ERP, CRM, and SCM systems, such as Oracle Manufacturing. As a complement to PTC's bundling of TIBCO, Windchill ESI uses flexible industry standards to enable customers to incorporate other commercial middleware vendors where necessary.
Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration became available to customers in December 2003 and can be licensed through PTC. For more information on Windchill 7.0, please refer to the press release "PTC Strengthens Leading Product Development System With Release of Windchill 7.0". Additional information on Windchill ESI is available in the product section of PTC.com.
About PTC
PTC (NASDAQ:PMTC) develops, markets, and supports software solutions that help manufacturers win with superior products. PTC is the world's largest software company with a total commitment to product development. The company services more than 33,000 customers worldwide.
