Bosch Group chooses PTC for global data management, product-development platform

-- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/12/2007 8:07:00 AM

Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany, a leading global supplier to the automotive industry, but also offers a broad portfolio of industrial technology, power tools, security solutions, and household appliances in more than 140 countries. Every day, thousands of Bosch scientists, engineers and technicians around the world are involved in the development of new products and systems, as well as innovative manufacturing processes. They also are devoted to continuous improvement of existing products. In addition, the number of approximately 3,000 applications for patents in 2006 demonstrates what a vital role R&D has within the company.
Bosch Group will deploy PTC Windchill PDMLink at numerous business units to improve product development processes. In a joint project, Bosch Corporate Information Technology (CI) and PTC global services will implement Windchill PDMLink to better manage Pro/ENGINEER data, which is the standard CAD/CAM/CAE solution at many Bosch business divisions.
The new platform reduces the number of system configurations and harmonizes data management at the different business units. The single platform also enables reusing data within the business units, and improves collaboration as more and more product information with increasing complexity has to be managed globally.
The decision to implement the PTC Product Development System (PDS) was also driven by Bosch's strategic requirement for a global Web-based IT architecture.
"Our corporate strategy calls for Bosch to be at the forefront of the adoption of leading technology to improve our overall business efficiency and effectiveness. Within product development, this meant finding a solution that could deliver product information and process management, automated workflow management and other important processes like change and configuration management," says Lutz C. Napiwotzky, VP, Engineering Applications Corporate Sector Information and System Services at Bosch. "After several successful pilot projects we decided that extending our use of the PTC solutions Pro/ENGINEER and Pro/INTRALINK by implementing a more complete Product Development System, including Windchill PDMLink, would be the best strategic move for us."
Adopting Windchill PDMLink offers Bosch Group expanded capabilities that are better suited to a global environment: heterogeneous CAD data management, change management, configuration management, and significantly improved performance across a Wide Area Network. Realizing a single data management platform for the Pro/ENGINEER CAD authoring tool will also reduce the number of additional applications necessary. All this leads to time and cost savings and greater flexibility in support and systems administration.
"Our divisions are relatively autonomous when selecting their preferred CAD and product development tools but will benefit from a flexible solution as a division-wide standard," says Napiwotzky. "Based on the standardized platform every division using Pro/ENGINEER will run its own roll-out project to implement their specific configuration in accordance with their business needs." Bosch and PTC Global Services expect that Windchill PDMLink will be deployed in all divisions using Pro/ENGINEER by 2010.