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outdated engineering data.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. Further information on PTC is
available at http://www.ptc.com.
Except for the historical information contained herein, matters discussed
in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
from those projected. These include: the success of our initiatives to
facilitate our customer's understanding of the benefits of our integral PLM
solutions, including return on investment and value creation; our ability to
realize revenue from the larger, strategic business opportunities we are
pursuing as well as from our point solutions based on Windchill technology;
the success of our partnering initiatives to deliver and implement solutions
that utilize third party technologies; the success of our Windchill integrated
solutions strategy initiatives, including providing the ability to exchange
product and complementary manufacturing and supply chain-related information
between our Windchill PLM solutions and ERP, CRM, and SCM systems; the success
of our cost reduction initiatives; and the effects of a weakened economy which
may impact the overall demand for software and related services; as well as
other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by
PTC with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's most
recent reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q.
PTC and its logo, Product First, The Product Development Company, Product
Development Means Business, Create Collaborate Control, Pro/ENGINEER,
Windchill, and all PTC product names and logos are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Parametric Technology Corporation or its subsidiaries in the
United States and in other countries. TIBCO is a registered trademark of
TIBCO Solutions Inc; Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation;
and SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG Germany.
Contact Information:
Joe Gavaghan Meredith Mendola
PTC Global Public Relations PTC Investor Relations
781-370-5074 781-370-6151
jgavaghan@ptc.com mmendola@ptc.com
SOURCE PTC
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Related links:
http://www.ptc.com
CONTACT:
Joe Gavaghan of PTC Global Public Relations,
+1-781-370-5074, jgavaghan@ptc.com; or Meredith Mendola of PTC
Investor Relations, +1-781-370- 6151, mmendola@ptc.com
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