Windchill vs Teamcenter: A detailed comparison

Product nowadays are more complex. Managing various forms of data related to all these products, their analysis, business processes, engineering and development requires a Product Lifecycle Management process to follow. Product Lifecycle Management or PLM software, as widely known as is an application that is needed to manage the entire lifecycle of a product from the beginning to the end.  

A PLM software manages data related to product. It also integrates data with ERP, CAD etc. and it helps in increasing the profit, enhancing the accuracy, efficiency and productivity of a company to a great extent. According to research reports, the product lifecycle management and engineering applications market is expected to touch $18.4 billion by 2022, as compared to $17.8 billion in 2017 at an annual growth rate of 0.7%.

Top PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software to use

Starting from inception, manufacturing to servicing, and disposal process, a PLM software manages data and documents, business processes and people involved in the product development process. It facilitates systematic tracking of all the changes a product undergoes during the development stage.

To be eligible in the PLM category, a product needs to have the following criteria:

• Manage product data through its lifecycle

• Have a centralized hub for product data

• Automation tools to improve efficiency 

Therefore, it is important for an organization to choose the best product lifecycle management software based on its needs. However, this can be a tough task for anyone, given the plethora of PLM programs available in the market. To ease your task, we have created this post which details the things you might be looking for and weigh in your research for the best PLM software.

What is WindChill?

PTC Windchill is an integrated PLM software which has been extensively used for managing all types of data, documents, content and processes of an organization. It has a fast, secured and robust architecture, allowing companies to collaborate from multiple locations.

Mostly utilized for the manufacturing sector, PTC Windchill is a web based business collaboration software which delivers manufacturers with all the required tools, processes for the transfer, visualization, distribution and publishing of the product data. Plus, it can manage models created with PTC Creo as well as other major CAD applications.

Coupled with the software’s strong financial performance and its capability to rapidly identify its customer’s needs, PLM solutions are offered to diversified industrial ecosystems including aerospace and defense, automotive, electronics, Hi-Tech companies, life sciences, manufacturing, oil & gas, Turbines, Power Sectors, retail & consumer products.

Being an integral part of PTC's product development system, Windchill handle all the product documentation and business processes throughout the product and service lifecycle. Its robust architecture helps it to prepare for tomorrow’s challenges today.

It offers a rich systematic approach for formulating, organizing, managing and reusing the product structures and associated content such as documentation, CAD files, requirements, service information, manufacturing data, supplier information, illustrations and calculations.

Windchill actively plays an integral part in improving the company’s competitiveness by allowing incessant improvements and automations of business processes and procedures. 

Key capabilities of PTC Windchill

Windchill is an important suite of products that addresses the various needs of product development.

The Windchill family includes products that helps to support product data management, service information, product analytics, collaboration, quality and integrations. It includes a few top PLM functionalities to deliver more product data to more people across the organization than ever before.

Central warehouse for all processes and product information 

PTC Windchill helps to reduce rework and enhances the time to market by efficiently gathering, organizing and managing all the data during every step of the product life cycle.

Track and manage quality during product development lifecycle

It ensures the product quality, safety and reliability are aligned properly with the requirements set for them during the development and usage of the products.

Powerful and scalable way to augment processes

It helps to streamline various top product development and service information processes to help you attain your organization’s business initiatives. The scalable nature of the PLM software helps to coordinate the groups all around the world and seamlessly expand to accommodate additional organizations, sites, processes and functions.

Optimize product performance across multiple domains

Another major capability of Windchill has been to bring top performing and profitable products to markets at a faster rate by analysing the performance during the early phase of the development process.  

Customizable user interface

During its initial stages, Windchill lacked user friendliness of the interface. However, a lot has changed since then. The 10th edition of Windchill ensures the users find the interface more customizable and personalized. The users can configure the interface and select their own modules to use, to appear on the interface.

Features of PTC Windchill to look for

Let us look at few PTC Windchill features that are worth using now.

Performance advisor

It is now easy to connect Windchill to PTC technical for receiving updates and information to help optimise and maintain system performance. It means that the tech support teams will get direct help from the PTC themselves.

CAD data management improvements

Users can build new promotion requests for modified or new check-in data. They can select the important objects by filtering out the clutters- whether it is MCAD designs, software, analysis, ECAD designs, requirements, bills of material management, etc.

Connected quality

After a product leaves the manufacturing unit, and comes into the market, it is very difficult to obtain analytical data on its usage and performance. But, this issue is resolved in the Windchill 11 as it includes a Quality Extension for ThingWorx which makes it easier for collecting product data and analyse it extensively.

Automatic project updates

Windchill is capable of automations. In version 11.0, it can upgrade on a project to project basis. This is helpful as it allows updates that are programmed to accustom to the needs of each individual project.

Role based apps

PTC Navigate is included in new version of Windchill 11. It enables PLM information to be accessible to all the stakeholders involved in the product delivery. Thanks to the ThingWorx technology that powers the new PTC navigate, the role and task based app includes an incredibly easy to use user interface.

What is Teamcenter?

Teamcenter software is an adaptable, modern product lifecycle management system which helps to connect people, processes across functional silos. Using Teamcenter, you can resolve many touch issues needed to develop highly successful products.

It’s easy-to-use, intuitive user interface enables people across the organization to take part in the product development process more easily. Teamcenter software enables organizations to take control of their product data, processes including 3D designs, embedded software, electronics, bill of materials and documentations.

Teamcenter software provides PLM solutions built for specific needs of various industries including Automotive, Aerospace, Medical, Power sectors, Turbines, electronics, and semiconductors, and much more. Using these solutions, companies can attain maximum value in their products and processes. 

Its flexibility to adapt to any business changes helps organizations to achieve greater returns by harnessing product information across the domains and departments such as quality, compliance, cost engineering, service, manufacturing and supply chain. The software platform is capable of suiting the requirements of each organizational needs using the technology. 

Key capabilities of Teamcenter

Teamcenter software is one of the most widely utilised PLM systems in the world. The benefits of Teamcenter solutions are clear. You can see the long-term business benefits across all industries easily. Few capabilities which make TeamCenter a go-to PLM software are:

Access PLM anytime, anywhere

Teamcentermobility helps organizations to take PLM decisions at any time. You can browse product structures, review documents and workflows, 2D drawing, 3D models directly from the mobile and make smart product decisions.

Manage product lifecycle

Teamcenter’s total portfolio of life cycle applications enables people to make decisions for their task at hand. This in return helps to unify the various work streams within the single source of product and process knowledge.

Integrated model driven systems engineering

It helps to accelerate schedules, minimize the risk by building a product model that defines all functional, architectural, interface, logical and connection which can automatically populate the system definitions and all other variant conditions.

Requirement driven product development

Using MS Office applications, you can capture, define, manage and control the product requirements. You can also link the product requirements to downstream processes, bringing visibility into the source data.

Resource, business and financial performance management

Teamcenter helps you understand the team workload requirements and the risk arising from shortfalls in the project. You can associate the bill rates along with team resources to bring both detailed and summary cost controls. Plus, you can manage contract deliverables to consumers.

System analysis and verification

Using Teamcenter, you can stimulate, model, optimize and analyse acute system performance and subsystem interaction before creating physical prototypes. As it supports tools for mathematical modelling, system computation and data analysis, organizations can easily identify and correct system design issues earlier.

Design validation

It helps you to establish hierarchical product structures that can be disintegrated into engineering tasks and manageable designs. It accelerates the design validation process by helping you gather design changes continuously.

Features of Teamcenter to look for

Let us look at few Teamcenter features that are worth using now.

Program planning

Teamcenter version 12 improves the user experience, while bringing visibility across domains, projects and the life cycle. With program planning functionality in Teamcenter, users can plan for accurate goals and requirements. It will help them to create things in sync with what is actually being executed and the users can see what is happening in the real-time dashboard views.

Product configurator

The new improved feature of Teamcenter enhances the effectiveness of the product configuration analysis process by assessing the constraints and removing the irrelevant content. Using Active Workspace, users can see product content consequential from the overlay of various configurations variants, as well as edit, apply configuration rules used to ensure the result is a valid, buildable product.

Bill of Material (BOM) management

Teamcenter BOM management brings improved usability using its enhanced tree structure navigation. It’s all new smart discovery capabilities enables users to get the information that is required and work with it.Users can rapidly search and filter across data to get the required information for fulfilling a particular task.

Teamcenter maintenance aware design

The new functionality of Teamcenter brings an integrated and model based reliability and safety approach which adds consistency modelling to the product life cycle. This helps in predicting the reliability issues before they become the product recalls.

Systems modelling

Teamcenter version 12 provides new system of modelling and diagramming in Active Workspace which makes it seamless to see cross domain relationships, data and dependencies- whether it is MCAD designs, software, analysis, ECAD designs, requirements etc. The Teamcenter software manages all the large scale validation and assessment using various advanced simulation techniques.

In an industry, where the products are manufactured, it takes a lot of effort from the team and higher authorities to get an idea about a product, design it, divide the work and bring a team to work on the design, execute the actual work, finish the product and release it to the market.

The PLM software provides a complete solution package to organize all phases of product development life cycle. The time is now for organizations to adopt PLM software in order to increase revenue, customer loyalty, become responsive and maintain strategic advantage over competitors. Some of our clients also opt for our other services. Here are some you may also like: Salesforce development services RPA services