CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
13 May 2008
Implementation Investments
Sulzer Pumps Ltd Selects PTC® Product Development System to Improve Global Collaboration
PTC announced that Sulzer Pumps Ltd., a leading supplier of centrifugal pumps, has chosen PTC’s product development system (PDS) to achieve its global product development initiative. After an extensive benchmark against six other leading PLM vendors, Sulzer Pumps Ltd., a division of Switzerland-based Sulzer Group, selected PTC’s PDS including Windchill PDMLink®, Windchill ProjectLink™ and ProductView™ for its new global engineering platform. In addition, Sulzer Pumps selected PTC’s Global Service Organization (GSO) for consulting and training.
With 5700 employees and nearly 1,3 billion Euro in orders received in 2007, Sulzer Pumps is a leading provider of centrifugal pumping solutions to the oil gas, hydrocarbon, power and water industries as well as to paper and pulp mills industries. Product offerings range from highly sophisticated customer-specific and engineered pumps to highly standardized product series for the pulp and paper segment. Exceptionally fast global growth over recent years has created challenges for Sulzer Pumps around handling complex product configuration and change management processes in a complex CAD environment.
The company decided to implement Windchill to enhance collaboration between new equipment engineering and customer specific support services (CSS) and between distributed manufacturing and assembly sites. Furthermore, the company expects to accelerate time to market, facilitate the reuse of information and improve customer response time and design efficiency. The comprehensive visual collaboration capabilities of ProductView enable global collaboration by providing intuitive access product information at any stage in the development processes and for any team member. Sulzer Pumps plans to implement several hundred seats of Windchill® throughout its globally dispersed engineering, manufacturing and assembly sites. Additionally, PTC’s Global Support Organization will provide consulting and implementation support as well as role-based training through PTC University. The global engineering platform is to be integrated with Sulzer Pumps’ SAP implementation to allow the interchange of engineering and manufacturing bills of material.
“We conducted a comprehensive three-stage benchmark to find the best out of six PLM vendors for managing dispersed collaboration for our multi-CAD-engineering data and for integrating into our existing ERP-system,” says Dr. Ralf Gerdes, head of research & development at Sulzer Pumps. “Finally, we chose PTC as we were convinced by the product development system’s scalable, web-based software architecture, and PTC’s modular implementation approach. As a result of the system’s architecture we now have the flexibility to choose the adequate implementation timing for every site. Underscoring all of these points is PTC’s expertise in product development and its product development system, which delivers the capabilities we need to meet our business objectives.”
“The market for industrial equipment is undergoing a rapid evolution that is driving the need for competitive differentiation and speed to market. As a result, global players are forced to quickly adapt their business processes to meet ever-changing requirements,” says Dick Harrison, president and CEO, PTC. “Sulzer Pumps’ decision to implement the PTC Product Development System underscores the value that PTC solutions offer organizations to unite their enterprise-wide product development operations. Windchill’s ability to manage heterogeneous product data both inside and outside of Sulzer Pumps disparate locations and divisions supports the organization’s business and customer service goals.”
Sulzer prepared the decision for the PLM solution by detailing their product development and engineering processes to determine the specific business requirements and use cases that had to be met. To achieve common understanding, all 13 engineering locations and the product development centres have been involved in the evaluation process. PTC is also recognizing the involvement and support of the senior management team of Sulzer Pumps, to support successful implementation of this globally used PLM solution.
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