Thawing out WindChill
About PTC
Parametric Technology Corporation is a large vendor of CAD systems,
whose core product, proE, has some 28,000 customers. A traditional
3-tier client/server product, it is functionally mature (more or
less) and has achieved as much penetration of its target industries
(aerospace, high tech, and electronics) as it is going to get. With
sales of $928.4 million last year, that's no mean feat, but Parametric
would still like to grow at the rate that's expected for software
companies.
Its bid for growth is a new product, Windchill. This all-Internet
product was announced some three years ago, at the beginning of
the e-commerce craze.
The core idea of Windchill is a good one: to make engineering drawings
created on a proprietary CAD tool (such as proE) available to anyone
over the Web, even if they don't have the CAD package. To do this,
one needs a visualization tool, one that can "read" drawings
produced by CAD tools and display them on a browser.
The applications of a visualization tool are many. One can move
provisional design ideas forward to marketing or to the end consumer
and get reactions before everything is etched in stone. You can
move them backward to industrial engineering or to suppliers, who
can help the engineer to use cheaper parts or make the design more
manufacturable.
With typical software company ambition, PTC sold Windchill as a
full-scale collaborative design package. It was a vision sale, and
the purchasers were companies like EMC that were seeking a competitive
edge.
Two years, however, have now gone by, and visionary buyers are
scarce in this economic climate. It is not surprising, therefore,
that both the Windchill organization and the Windchill product are
now going through some changes.
Customers
PTC does not ordinarily release names of Windchill customers to
analysts (usually a bad sign). The single flagship customer for
ProjectLink is Exostar, a maker of ball bearings.
As noted above, EMC was a prominent early adopter of Windchill;
we believe that this project did not meet early expectations.
Industries
Collaborative design is most important in industries with high
rates of innovation and complex, expensive components. In such industries,
accumulating inventory of components is risky, because they go obsolete
quickly. But without free availability of components, innovation
is slowed, because the components needed for new product features
must be manufactured.
In such industries, collaborative design speeds availability of
components by giving suppliers advance notice of what they need
to make or supply.
The high-innovation industry that has been most taken with this
idea has been high-tech/electronics, and these two areas (high tech
boxes and electronic parts) are Windchill's primary focus going
forward.
According to PTC, Windchill has had some acceptance in aerospace
(another frequent innovation industry), but not much in automotive.
It has also achieved some penetration in highly engineered and heavy
equipment industries.
The original Windchill product was true to its PDM/CAD heritage
in being more a toolkit than a product. As such, it could be adapted
to the needs of many industries, so PTC says that any concentration
of customers in particular industries may be deceptive.
The Product
The core Windchill product, now in Version 6.0, has some forty
modules. These modules fall into three broad areas:
- Document management
(vaulting)
- Workflow
- Visualization
Windchill is a "net-native" application, so any of these
functions can be performed over the Internet and, with appropriate
management of roles and permissions, between companies.
Document management functions allow people to capture and preserve
different versions of documents, typically CAD documents.
Workflow allows people to distribute the documents to others in
a defined flow, for the purposes of markup or approval.
Visualization allows people to see (and possibly mark up) an engineering
drawing, but not to modify it or use it without modification in
their own CAD system.
Within companies, these functions fall into the CAD/PDM (product
data management) space. They allow companies who know how to use
them to conduct product development with some discipline and rigor,
through the appropriate use of approvals and vaulting.
Inter-company, over the Internet, the benefits are roughly the
same. They include:
- Disciplined development, through rigorous use
of version control and approvals (same as intra-company, but harder
to manage)
- Rapid development, through reuse of previous designs
(same as intra-company, but harder to manage)
- Application of higher-level
skills, because more skilled people are brought into the process
(even more true of inter-company, collaborative design)
- Faster
time to market, because suppliers are more involved (more available
with inter-company, collaborative design)
- Lower component cost,
because suppliers can suggest modifications (more available with
inter-company design)
- Greater manufacturability, because suppliers
can modify parts for manufacturability (more available with collaborative
design)
Unfortunately, with the core Windchill product, companies attempting
to gain these benefits took a long time to do so because of the
time it took to build applications from the toolset.
PTC, therefore, is now building a set of pre-packaged applications
on top of the Windchill core that they hope will enable companies
to reach one or more of these benefits more quickly. Each is designed
to support a single collaborative design process. The packages that
might be available this year include:
ProjectLink: Uses the core workflow capability to facilitate collaborative
engineering design projects. This is not a full-fledged project
management tool; rather, it is designed to help bring in people
who are not ordinarily part of the design process, such as people
in marketing.
Available today in Version 6.1. Exostar is a beta customer; 25
other customers have signed up.
PartsLink: Announced this month. Enables suppliers and e-marketplaces
to publish complex specifications and drawings for parts into a
database that will allow flexible searches. The idea is to give
engineers better access to parts that might meet their specifications.
Announced availability this month. "A few" customers.
PDM (Product Data Management): Allows vaulting; check-out, check-in;
and approvals of engineering drawings across organizations. Available
Q4. Not reviewed.
Design-to-Order: A design configurator. Generates a CAD drawing
from a set of specifications provided by a customer or salesperson.
Available Q4. Not reviewed.
No pricing information is available on these products.
Assessment
POSITIVE: Companies that see a clear benefit to sharing drawings
in a structured way with people not ordinarily included in the process
may well be able to get benefit from Windchill's combination of
net-readiness, workflow, and visualization tools. Two prerequisites:
have pro/E or some other compatible CAD system as the source of
the documents and don't expect the people viewing the documents
to be doing changes in their systems. Companies who see a potential
benefit in simple sharing of CAD documents should recognize that
the costs of building from a toolkit can easily overwhelm the benefits.
The most likely buyers would be those who can use ProjectLink or
SupplyLink.
NEGATIVE: The core differentiator for Windchill is its ability
to present engineering drawings to people who have only a browser.
This is an important capability for some businesses, but it is only
one of many capabilities needed to set up a full-fledged collaborative
design process. Companies who want to start with this visualization
capability and get the rest from PTC as it is developed should recognize
that development so far has been slow and thought leadership has
been limited. To reduce risk, look carefully at current implementations
of the new products.
BOTTOM LINE: Companies whose needs in the collaborative design
space closely match Windchill's capabilities should consider the
product. These will probably be companies that have are capable
of setting up and imposing a structured review process and companies
that require browser-based visualization.
The Competitive Space
Each of the major companies in the space have a different set of
capabilities.
PTC is most competitive when companies need to view drawings and
be supported by a structured review process.
MatrixOne is arguably most directly competitive with PTC; they
have focused more on full-fledged process management and on setting
up complex supplier registries that support these processes.
i2 and Commerce One have products that compete directly with SupplyLink,
with i2 having the most robust catalog and search capability.
SAP PLM is an extension of its ECO (engineering change order) capability,
which will eventually look to providing server-to-server integration.
Agile also has capability in the sourcing area, but its primary
focus is component engineering, that is, taking existing engineering
drawings and creating the manufacturing and component infrastructure
that will allow the product to be manufactured.
For other PLM company assessments, see our archive.
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