Extends PLM with Product Analytics and Quality Lifecycle Management, Delivers Acclaimed User Experience

NEEDHAM, Mass. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — April 4, 2011 — PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), The Product Development Company^®, today announced the release of Windchill® 10.0, the newest version of PTC’s product lifecycle management ( PLM) software. With the latest release of Windchill, PTC is enabling manufacturers to do more throughout the product lifecycle, know more about product performance and get more value from PLM.

“Customers are constantly telling us about the escalating complexity of product development driven by manufacturers’ focus on increased product differentiation, an explosion in the volume of regulatory constraints, continual quality pressures, the realization of service operations as a significant profit center, and heightened sensitivity to the environmental impact of product operations,” said Brian Shepherd, executive vice president, product development, PTC.

With new capabilities that focus on product analytics and quality management, Windchill 10.0 allows customers to more effectively define, manage, and validate complete bills of material (BOMs), providing linkages across domain-specific views of product structures throughout the entire lifecycle. Windchill 10.0 also includes a new user experience and improved system administration, making it easier than ever to use and maintain and enabling broad adoption.

Do More With Structured Product and Service Information Management

Windchill centrally manages all product deliverables including MCAD, ECAD, documentation and service information. Windchill 10.0 unifies its ECAD data management capabilities to offer a common user experience, consistent with its existing approach for MCAD data management.

For many companies, significant business value is derived from aftermarket services and parts. To ensure highly profitable maintenance, repair, and overhaul organizations, the processes of service and spare parts planning must be concurrent with product development. When combined with Creo™ for 3D illustrated and animated service instructions and parts lists, and Arbortext® for technical communications creation and delivery, Windchill will support a complete, integral service information solution.

PTC has long advocated that business improvement is enabled by process excellence. With advances in top-down-design and configuration management, and efficiencies in interference management, Windchill 10.0 supports business process optimization in many areas, but most notably for Detailed Design, Variant Design and Generation, and Verification and Validation.

“The many new configuration capabilities in Windchill 10.0 will give our users much more power and flexibility in managing products,” said Terry Gimbre, Engineering Manager, Thales Communications, Inc. “This supports our commitment to continuous process improvement and enhances our ability to deliver high quality mission critical products on which lives literally depend.”

Know More Through Comprehensive Product Analytics and Quality

With Windchill 10.0, PTC’s Relex and Insight product lines have been rebranded as part of the Windchill product family to better reflect their availability as both a stand-alone offering as well as part of a comprehensive Windchill solution.

Windchill Quality Solutions (including the former Relex products) help improve next-generation products and reduce the cost of poor quality by preventing repeat errors and building reliability and risk management into the product development lifecycle. New offerings include solutions for CAPA (Corrective Action Preventive Action) to accelerate problem resolution through improved monitoring and root cause identification.

Equally important, Windchill Product Analytics (formerly InSight) provides early knowledge of product performance and includes new solutions for cost visibility and carbon footprint analysis. These enhancements bolster an already rich solution for materials and substance management, which includes reporting against compliance specifications such as REACH and RoHS. Collectively, these solutions help companies understand environmental impacts and address potential points of failure before they occur.

Get More From Enhanced Usability, Maintainability, Upgradeability

Windchill 10.0 enables customers to derive significantly more value from their PLM investment by providing a dramatically improved user experience along with several administrative process improvements. The approachable user experience results in a quick learning curve and expands adoption among casual users. For experienced users, the modern and pleasing user experience drives productivity and satisfaction. For IT professionals, easier upgrades, enhanced administrative support, and robust new system monitoring tools improve maintainability and lower the total cost of ownership.

“Windchill 10.0 represents a sea change in usability. The amount of user research that PTC did was prodigious and impressive. And clearly, they successfully applied what they had learned,” noted Steve Krug, usability expert and author of “Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.”

“Windchill 10.0, the largest software release in company history, extends PTC’s PLM leadership through new capabilities designed to help product organizations thrive today and prosper tomorrow,” said Shepherd. “Specifically, Windchill allows business leaders to achieve their goals through product excellence: delivering innovative offerings to the market that exceed customer demands, adhere to regulatory and quality requirements, and will support aftermarket service efficiency. With its breadth of capabilities, Windchill 10.0 delivers more out-of-the-box capabilities than ever while its intuitive user experience and upgradeability will enable accelerated adoption.”