February 2002
Getting Back to the Work You Love

Windchill ProjectLink empowers you to focus on your creative design work throughout the collaborative product development process. by Jonathan Severance, freelance writer

If you're a design engineer or engineering project manager, chances are you chose your profession because you like to invent things - to see your creative energies transformed into tangible products that sell. But getting from here to there - from that initial creative spark to something you can touch and feel - involves many other people and many discrete tasks that must be coordinated. Problems come up. Issues need to be resolved. Things change, and sometimes you don't agree with the changes. You may not be able to change your co-workers' minds, but you may be able to influence what tools your company uses. And using Windchill ProjectLink can have a very positive effect on the quality of your day-to-day work life. The big picture. Windchill ProjectLink enables you and your project team members, whether you are located in the same building or on multiple continents, to conduct high-quality collaborative design and development. Companies that deploy Windchill ProjectLink can expect: (1) reduced time-to-market due to higher efficiencies in product development; and (2) more effective product development because all stakeholders involved in the process - marketing, design engineering, manufacturing engineering, procurement, and production- are engaged early. This group of stakeholders spans the extended enterprise; that is, the company itself, its supply chain, channel partners, and customers. With such collaboration, companies are much better enabled to "get it right" from the start, resulting in fewer, costly engineering change orders (ECOs) after release. That's all well and good, you say. But how can Windchill ProjectLink enhance the quality of my work life? Well, the features that deliver the financial and strategic benefits described above also deliver operational benefits that can have a positive impact on your work life. To set the stage, think about the really well-run projects you have participated in over the years. What did these successful projects have in common? It's likely you knew who the players were, they knew who they were, and everybody knew his responsibilities and spans of authority. You knew where you could find the latest design documents, and if a spec or document changed, you were informed right away. Somebody made sure that the right people were in the right meetings at the right times for project or design reviews. You had visualization tools that made it easy to show off your work to less technical people. When the engineering package was formally released to manufacturing, they knew what was coming because they were involved in the design and development effort all along. With the benefit of advance knowledge and their own participation in shaping the design for manufacturability, they were not compelled to change it dramatically once it was delivered to manufacturing. In short, the entire process was in control so re-work was held to a minimum, and you were able to do excellent design work. Is this a fantasy, you ask? Maybe you've never been involved with such a project. Perhaps you have always had access to current design tools, but you've probably struggled with process-related problems, resulting in your share of frustrations and disappointments. And if you have attempted to conduct concurrent engineering or some other form of collaborative development without the benefit of effective tools, you know that the potential for process-related problems is increased due to the heightened need for coordination. Windchill ProjectLink was designed to foster a collaborative product development process that is controlled and high-performing, and more likely to be rewarding for you. How? Consider these key features and benefits: Shared workspaces for paperless collaboration with virtual teams in real time. Forget the lag time resulting from mailing, or even emailing, documents or CAD files. Show your work in process to your colleagues in Europe. Hear their comments and update the working drawing while they wait, if you wish. Essentially, the "sharing" technology has come of age so you can achieve highly effective, interactive design sessions. Workflow features that implement your business rules used in the development process. Keep the process in control. Check project status at any time. When it's time for a design review meeting, the right people are automatically notified via email. If something changes, people are notified. These features don't replace a project manager with good communications skills, but they certainly facilitate getting people together to make decisions. Document management with configuration control. Project documents, no matter where they are sourced, are accessible to you via a virtual folder-based interface. And you can use this to store and retrieve almost any type of file-based material, from text-based specifications to bills of material (BOMs), software source code, and 2D and 3D designs generated with various CAD tools. Wouldn't it be nice to go to one place for information, and know that what you see is the actual, up-to-date material? Putting it all together. These features, along with the business benefits described earlier in this article, are likely to appeal to you, especially if your company is becoming more collaborative in product development. The following scenario shows how you can use Windchill ProjectLink in a realistic setting. Imagine you are an engineering manager for a contract design and manufacturing house. One of your customers, a computer manufacturer, wants you to design and build an instrument controller for a new "slim client" line it is developing that has a radical design. The interface specs are solid in terms of signals and pin-outs, but the customer's design team is still tweaking the mechanical aspects of the design. Given the limited clearance for your yet-to-be-designed board, every bit of space helps, and space will drive your choices for components and manufacturing technology, which will, in turn, drive your manufacturing costs. What's needed here? To do this right, you need to ensure that both companies communicate as effectively and as painlessly as possible. You involve your product development, sales, and engineering teams. You make sure your customer's engineering and procurement people are involved. You arrange for both these groups to load the relevant documents and CAD files of your customer's product into Windchill ProjectLink via your respective instances of Pro/ENGINEER. During your meeting, which may take place in offices thousands of miles apart, you collaborate by hashing out the mechanical specifications, sharing with your customer the trade-offs involved. After negotiating the type and extent of allowed changes in the customer's design, your proposal team can develop a reliable cost model. Because your design and manufacturing staff members have a reasonable view of your product requirements, they have a jump start on their work. With Windchill ProjectLink, the initial production design integrates and performs properly with your customer's new computer system. Your customer is happy and you feel confident that the job was well done. Getting back to work. Hopefully you have a sense of how Windchill ProjectLink, as a collaborative work-in-process tool, can help eliminate some of the pain that typically accompanies design and development work. The very same features in Windchill ProjectLink that result in a more effective and efficient collaborative development process for your company can also enhance your professional life. That is because, in the final analysis, these features free you up to focus on the creative aspects of design work, which may well be the most rewarding elements of your job. And if collaborative product development is new to you, perhaps you now have a taste of how it can be a personally rewarding experience for you and your colleagues - whether they are located in the next cubicle or a continent away. Did you enjoy this article? Send us your feedback.