CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
8 September 2008
Implementation Investments
G.D Expands Utilization Of PTC® Product Development System to Drive Innovation Efficiency, Reduce Costs and Improve Collaboration with Third Parties
PTC announced that G.D has selected PTC® PLM solutions to manage its core product development cycle. G.D, a world leader in the design and manufacturing of automatic packaging machinery, started working with PTC 15 years ago, when Pro/ENGINEER® was introduced. Recently, G.D decided to deploy Windchill®, to replace their existing PLM system in all their Pro/ENGINEER-related applications. The decision to use Windchill was made after a careful evaluation of PTC's enterprise PLM capabilities and the results of a pilot project carried out together with PTC. In particular, Windchill proved to be extremely efficient in managing very complex Pro/ENGINEER data and would help G.D optimize their detailed design activities, expand their digital design capabilities, and continue to improve their overall product development process.
For the past 15 years, the Engineering Department of G.D has been using Pro/ENGINEER high performance capabilities for its top down development process. Windchill was selected for its capability to reliably manage very large Pro/ENGINEER assembly models (tens of thousands components), to remarkably expand their visibility within and outside the organization, through secure shared access, and to ensure full continued compatibility with Pro/ENGINEER complex evolving functionalities.
The core expertise of G.D is its research & development strategy for efficient cigarette making and packing lines. Innovation, design creativity and large investments in the development of new solutions (more than 10% of its annual revenues) have been the company’s recipe for revolutionary products. G.D realized that PTC’s integral product development system would help them accelerate the Design process and make it more efficient. Key elements of successful design for G.D include turning more ideas into feasible digital products, reuse of designs, implementing concurrent engineering, and collaborating with third-parties. As a result, the entire product development cycle becomes smoother and leaner, i.e. more efficient, with a shorter development time. The innovations introduced by G.D have also been based on its capacity to work as a partner with customers, to understand their needs, to develop new solutions, to plan and reach together future targets. PTC's Product Development System offers G.D the ideal platform to implement this strategy and achieve its business objectives.
“Our industry is changing rapidly, and our ability to provide a wider range of innovative, flexible, top-performing packaging solutions, in conjunction with more value-added services, is critical. We need to respond by streamlining our development process, expanding our lean manufacturing practices, and injecting more digital contents to reduce costs and time while increasing our final design quality. PTC is not only able to provide us with the best-in-class product development system to meet these requests, but has also proven to be a first-class service partner for supporting us along this journey, based on a clear deployment roadmap,” said Francesco Nicastro, CIO of G.D. “The fast roll-out of an integral Product Development System will substantially support our organic growth and allow us to achieve our objectives.”
“The automated machinery industry is under significant competitive pressure to reduce cycle times and costs by sharing and reusing more mechanical and software data on a global scale,” said Josh Fredberg, VP of product and market strategy, PTC. “This requires a Web-based PLM infrastructure which can be easily rolled out on a global scale, but it also requires a deep knowledge about the product development process. G.D’s decision to strengthen its partnership with PTC demonstrates that we are providing leading technology combined with the services expertise to help our customers realize important short-term and long-term business achievements.”
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