The Buehler Motor GmbH, based in Nuernberg, Germany, has decided to standardize on the PTC Product Development System (PDS) as its enterprise PLM solution to improve global collaboration and reduce development costs.

Buehler is a small and medium business (SMB) company developing and manufacturing standard products like DC motors, DC gear motors and water pumps and highly customized mechatronic drive solutions for customers in the automotive, aerospace and general industries.

Buehler selected Pro/ENGINEER® and Windchill to better connect their development and production sites in Germany, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Mexico, USA and China, creating one centralized platform for data and process management for all field activities within the company. In the past, engineers used a non-parametric 3D system and managed their CAD data locally, without having direct access to data produced at other sites, which inhibited design reuse and collaboration in global project teams. Further challenges to overcome were the heterogeneous release and change management processes at the different locations. Buehler will implement the Product Development System at six locations worldwide to support global product development and data management, setting up a common design release and change management process for the entire organization. More than 150 engineers and technicians will use the system on a regular base.

Buehler has realized that although it is a medium sized company, they are facing the same challenges in product development as large enterprises: They need to develop innovative high-quality products in ever shorter time and react more and more flexibly to quickly changing customer requirements. PLM technology turns out to be a significant competitive edge for succeeding in global competition. As SMB companies are not able to scale in equal measure as large enterprises they rely even more on robust PLM technology to help drive efficiencies into product development. Accordingly, Buehler Group was looking for a PLM vendor with sound track record in product development. Ultimately, Buehler chose PTC for its single platform approach and its success deploying enterprise PLM solutions.

The PTC Product Development System was benchmarked against another PLM solution with a strong foothold in the automotive industry and won the contest on a number of key points: “PTC’s broad market penetration in the automotive industry, as well as its marquee deployments at many leading product development organizations and its better cost/performance ratio were key factors in our decision”, said Gerhard Denk, chief information officer of Buehler Motor GmbH. “Our goal is to shorten time-to-market by improving our product development. The PTC product development system (PDS) offers key capabilities enabling us to work closer with our customers. We expect the PDS to help us reduce our development cycle times and the related costs”.

“Today’s small and mid-sized companies have basically the same product lifecycle management requirements as large corporations because they are developing and manufacturing highly sophisticated products on a global scale. They need a powerful web-based product development system to support collaboration among their global sites and with customers,”says Sin Min Yap, director, product and market strategy, PTC. “We are happy about Buehler’s strategic decision to implement our product development system. This will help them to further leverage their product development goals at their dispersed development sites.”

GraphiXystems GmbH, a PTC silver partner, provided comprehensive consulting during the selection of the PLM system. Finally, Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill were purchased through GraphiXystems GmbH in conjunction with their partner MTC Antos, Buckel & Partner GmbH, a GraphiXystems partner and a PTC gold partner. The entire implementation of Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill, and user training, as well as process consultancy is being provided by PTC Platinum partner INNEO Solutions GmbH.

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