Linking product and operational information across the enterprise
The Windchill« Production Factor! bridges the gap between product design and production. Facilitating an easy exchange of information between Windchill and enterprise manufacturing systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and management resource planning (MRP), the Windchill Production Factor! ensures that the right information is available to all those who need it. The value of the operational information that resides in these manufacturing systems, such as supplier or cost information, is significantly increased by the Windchill Production Factor!
The Windchill Production Factor! is designed to support the product development lifecycle by allowing the exchange of part master data, bill of materials (BOM) data, and engineering change information among Windchill and enterprise manufacturing systems. Use of this information is critical for the other solutions that form the Windchill Factor! e-SeriesÖ. The ability to exchange information fulfills a critical link in the collaborative product commerce (CPC) vision.
Using the Windchill Production Factor!, product information can easily be synchronized between Windchill and the production systems employed by the extended enterprise. As information in different systems is created or modified, the value of having access to the latest information becomes critical. The Windchill Production Factor! ensures that the information in all involved systems is synchronized and maintained.
Seamless Integration
By using the Windchill Production Factor!, users can easily modify information within different business systems during the course of their daily job responsibilities. Windchill uses standard Web technology such as browsers and Java« applets to access and present information stored in the business systems employed throughout the extended enterprise. No specialized knowledge of these systems or the integration mechanism is necessary to accomplish these basic tasks. Exchange of information can also be triggered using sophisticated lifecycle and workflow management methods. As a product passes through its various design stages, the information exchange can be trigged in an intelligent manner based on business practices.
Distributed Communication
In today's global marketplace, it is common for a company to have distributed manufacturing sites around the world. Similarly, companies often have more than one enterprise system such as ERP to manage their processes. The accumulation of these various systems often results from an evolution of business systems implementations among various divisions as well as business acquisitions over time.
This diverse set of enterprise applications can easily be linked together with the combined solutions of the Windchill Production Factor! and the Windchill Collaboration Factor!. The Windchill Collaboration Factor! creates an interenterprise collaborative environment for finding, managing, and using valuable product and process knowledge, regardless of where that information resides or what format it is in.
The benefits of this enterprise-wide integration have enormous business potential, including synchronized information across various enterprise systems.
Reusable Architecture
The Windchill Production Factor! was designed to provide a common gateway and retrieval mechanism for accessing all types of production and manufacturing information, including data from ERP systems. It provides a platform- and network-independent communications solution. Using the Web-based federation architecture of Windchill for seamlessly integrating disparate business systems, the Windchill Production Factor! can easily be extended to handle different types of enterprise systems.
The open-enterprise, application-integration approach of the Windchill Production Factor! protects the investments that companies have in their current IT implementations today and allows easy linking to any future system that they may be considering.
In today's global, around-the-clock economy, the ability to easily harness the business knowledge stored in different enterprise systems is essential. Being able to share information between the enterprise systems that a company uses in production and those used in product development allows a great deal of flexibility and improves product quality as well as time to market. The Windchill Production Factor! is focused on providing such abilities to Windchill.
Companies that use Windchill Production Factor! can easily achieve new levels of competitiveness by harnessing the power of seamless interoperability among enterprise applications. Any user will see great benefits from the automatic synchronization of information between Windchill and other enterprise systems. Consistent, up-to-date information accessible to all those who need it allows companies to achieve greater business flexibility.
The Windchill Production Factor! is part of the Windchill Factor! e-Series, a comprehensive suite of e-business solutions for CPC. From product planning through production and everything in between, the Windchill Factor! e-Series exploits the Internet for product collaboration, and in so doing, raises the value of product information to an enterprise asset.