Samsung Electronics goes global on PTC Windchill for efficient engineering

The company says it chose Windchill because of its web-based support of key product development processes on a single technology architecture and execution environment. Its BoM project involves implementing an additional 3,600 seats of Windchill, which is scheduled for completion next year, and ties into its strategy to provide a single, configurable BoM for each product that manages options and variants, as well as engineering to manufacturing relationships. Samsung says it expects to improve the quality of BoM information, further improve time-to-market and increase operational efficiency. “If we hope to continue our efforts to provide high quality products and services to our customers, we must ensure that our product development processes are well managed and the relevant data is easily shared with our geographically dispersed teams,” says Hee-sun Park, CIO of Samsung Electronics.” When this project is fully implemented, SEC will be one of the largest Windchill customers in Asia. “We have been in a strategic partnership with PTC for six years, and the tremendously successful results have proven that PTC is a company that provides the best solutions for us, which is why we continue to select and implement their PLM solutions throughout the SEC organization,” says Park. Samsung first adopted 4,500 seats of Windchill PDMLink in 2002 for the collaborative product development of moulds and PCBs. That system provides the company with an engineering information exchange environment for product specifications, drawings and change management, out to its extended supply chain. Recorded improvements there include optimised product development processes and security for design information, as well as improved product quality and reduced development lead time. Hence, says the company, its expansion into the Windchill implementation at its LCD division and its global software development organisations. For its Software Information System (SIS) project, Samsung has now connected thousands of software developers across divisions and countries and says it is cutting development costs and improving quality through increased software design reuse. Key to achieving that was integrating multiple IBM Rational ClearCase software configuration management systems to Windchill, using PTC’s Ready for Rational certified Integration to Rational ClearCase. That enabled visibility of software designs across the divisions. Windchill now provides a standardised approval process to turn software designs into re-usable software components, as well as a searchable catalogue, allowing engineers to find designs instead of duplicating work from other divisions.