CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
16 March 2005
Implementation Investments
Webasto Expands PTC Windchill Deployment to More Than 1,000 Users around the World
PTC announced that Webasto AG, headquartered in Stockdorf, Germany, has expanded its deployment of Windchill® to more than 1,000 users worldwide. Webasto initially selected Windchill in 2001 as its product data management and workflow platform, and has since adopted Windchill ProjectLinkT for project collaboration and program management and execution.
With almost 6,500 employees worldwide and revenue of $1.85 billion USD, Webasto is the leading Tier-1 supplier of roof and heating systems to the international automotive industry. Like many manufacturing companies, Webasto faces challenges in optimizing its product development processes as it has globally distributed development and manufacturing sites that use different CAD and CAD workgroup management tools. Windchill manages the overall change management process for all sites and has become the leading backbone system for the generation of new articles and bill of materials, closely integrated with Webasto's local ERP systems. Additionally, Webasto uses Windchill to support its Advanced Product Quality Process (APQP) initiative-a standard quality process prescribed from QS 9000.
" Webasto has ambitious goals for growth. In order to continue setting the standard for suppliers to the international automotive industry, we need to employ processes and technologies that enable us to be innovative and efficient at the same time," explained Bernd Gollnitz, CIO of Webasto AG. "Collaboration has become crucial for us, as our customers increasingly work on cross-brand or cross-platform projects. Windchill enables product development teams from different sites to collaborate more efficiently on global projects. Additionally, Windchill has improved our ability to adopt industry standards for quality that are required by our customers. This is critical for growth in the highly competitive automotive industry."
"PTC's strength in managing complex data in a distributed environment with heterogeneous IT infrastructures is key for automotive customers like Webasto. Windchill also provides an integral and flexible architecture that makes it easy for customers to adopt new functionality such as project collaboration," said Dhiren Verma, director, automotive vertical market development at PTC. "We are proud to support Webasto's product development needs as it continues executing its strategy of growth through innovation."
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