For PTC’s inaugural Global Partner Network Awards, we received over 100 qualified submissions. Each told a story of digital transformation with specific outcomes driving value across specific departments or entire organizations. All were weighty and important projects, and our independent judges from ARC Advisory Group did not have an easy task selecting the winners and finalists.
Here are the stories that rose to the top of our judges’ criteria: Nine remarkable projects selected as our 2021 Partner Network Award qualitative winners. Behind each synopsis is a fascinating example that we will capture on our PTC case studies page. I hope you find them as inspiring as I do!
Most Impact in Digital Transformation at Scale: EAC and JR Automation
Finalists: LTI, Accenture
EAC’s client, JR Automation, is known for designing, building, and integrating advanced automation solutions worldwide. To accomplish this, they rely on a suite of digital transformation solutions from PTC, including Creo, Windchill, and ThingWorx.
Innovation requires change. However, when changes are slow to roll out across the factory floor, costs and delays mount. While evaluating process flows, JR Automation discovered its engineers were spending up to 8% of their time updating print specifications, with a cost impact of over a million dollars per year.
They engaged EAC to create a new redlining process to enable on-demand access to the latest engineering designs on the shop floor. EAC’s highly innovative, custom kiosks accelerated delivery cycles, reduced red tape and brought in an eye-opening project ROI of $1.4 million. Simply an extraordinary project from an incredible partner.
Transformation in Community Impact: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and IKEA
Finalists: EAC, Rockwell Automation
IKEA is the Swedish home furnishings dynamo with a deep commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability. To achieve compliance with environmental reporting requirements, IKEA engaged TCS to create a comprehensive plastics reporting solution from product data stored in Windchill.
Like every project, this one was not without its challenges. At one point, the TCS team needed to extract plastics data from 300,000 3D CAD models -- a herculean manual task. Searching for a lower-cost solution, the TCS team wrote a plug-in that successfully reduced the effort from 10,000 hours to just 45.
This deeply transformational solution will allow IKEA to preserve its brand promise and effectively measure, monitor and improve its environmental sourcing for decades to come. Among the winners are TCS, IKEA, and the planet. That’s what I call a win-win-win!
Teaming (Best Ecosystem Project): CB Technologies and Texmark Chemical
Finalists: LTTS, Accenture
What’s the best way to stay ahead of the curve? If you’re Texmark Chemical, the answer is… by inventing the future! Texmark Chemical’s Refinery-of-the-Future initiative is using the Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) to re-imagine nearly every aspect of the oil and gas industry. Five frameworks are scoping the future of the Connected Worker; Asset Integrity Management; Video-as-a-Sensor; Worker Safety & Security; and Condition Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance.
This ambitious project has enjoined six PTC partners to deliver a truly best-of-breed solution: HPE, Intel, Aruba, RealWear, National Instruments, and CBT. CBT leads the Connected Worker solution that enables field technicians working in dangerous and remote locations to instantly access critical data, such as temperature and pressure readings, via a wearable device. It utilizes augmented reality to improve maintenance procedures.
Texmark is already realizing benefits from the solution, including 75% less time to identify asset malfunctions and 90% reduction in time to file compliance evidence.
Congratulations all around on this truly transformational project: to CBT, who submitted it, Texmark who sponsored it, and all the partners who are contributing to its success.
Trailblazer / Innovation Award: Sconce and LAI International
Finalists: Vectrona, LTI
Sconce’s client was LAI International, a mid-sized aerospace and defense supplier whose business was significantly upended by the global COVID pandemic.
At the start of the pandemic, many of LAI’s contracts were placed on hold. To survive, the company needed to adapt quickly with an in-demand alternative. It found that an alternative in urgently needed ventilated face shields. LAI turned to Sconce to help it accomplish the seemingly impossible: adopt a scalable product development platform that could help implement a complete product cycle – from concept to manufacture – in just weeks.
Sconce checked all the boxes with Onshape, PTC’s cloud-based product development platform that is affordable, required minimal training and enabled remote collaboration. They quickly connected remote teams of designers, consultants and manufacturers. A prototype was delivered within weeks and complete manufacturing plans soon followed.
Not only did LAI survive the pandemic – it came through stronger than ever. Among the many benefits LAI has discovered is superior sourcing through an expanded supply chain that will continue to add value as contracts are reinstated.
Transformation in Digital Engineering: Ansys and Global Appliance Manufacturer
Finalists: Integral Investments Group, Accenture
Ansys’ client is a global appliance manufacturer that was dealing with runaway market growth – a nice problem to have! With demand for innovation outstripping its ability to deliver, the company wanted to re-engineer its design practices to stay ahead of the competition. It turned to PTC technology and partner Ansys to shorten development cycles and enhance innovation on a global scale.
Ansys supercharges Creo with a suite of capabilities that help designers compress design cycles, explore more design options, and provide higher quality designs for verification. Creo Simulation Live was implemented across the client’s global locations.
Today the appliance manufacturer is benefiting from an estimated 30% improvement in engineering productivity and 50% increase in design space exploration, driving greater innovation into every new and refactored product it brings to market.
Transformation in Connected Products: KPMG and Sunbelt Rentals
Finalists: Kalypso (2 separate projects)
With a fleet of over 600,000 assets made by hundreds of equipment manufacturers, Sunbelt is an operations powerhouse. Yet with data fragmented across 16 systems, the company’s IoT strategy was underperforming. Sunbelt engaged KPMG to deliver on the promise of IoT by centralizing IoT data. KPMG was instrumental in convincing Sunbelt to standardize on a single solution as its IoT platform, ThingWorx.
It is hard to overemphasize the impact of this consolidation strategy. Today, Sunbelt’s maintenance and operations staff knows the exact location, maintenance and job status of every piece of equipment, all in one system! So gone are the days when high-end equipment would lay around for days or weeks in remote job sites, waiting to be located and brought back. Sunbelt now offers select customers the ability to manage all their assets, both in-house and Sunbelt provided, through a customer edition of its connected fleet portal.
What an incredible story! Congratulations to KPMG and Sunbelt Rentals on an amazing smart, connected journey.
Transformation in Manufacturing Operations award: LTI and Eaton
Finalists: DVM Teknoloji, MAIT GmbH
LTI’s client is Eaton, a global manufacturer of power systems and industrial products used in diverse industrial applications. As part of Eaton’s Industry 4.0 vision, the company commissioned a Digital Manufacturing initiative to help it transition to the intelligent, automated factory of the future.
LTI was an early collaborator, helping Eaton define a roadmap for success, conduct value discovery workshops and guide the company’s adoption of ThingWorx, Kepware, and Vuforia as foundational Smart Factory solutions.
With roadmap in place, LTI helped Eaton implement factory automation solutions in the areas of equipment utilization, guided workflows and predictive maintenance.
A Vuforia-based remote training and assistance solution was deemed a game changer and quickly became the go-to solution for virtual plant visits and inspections.
The impact to date has been quite remarkable: At the implemented sites, Eaton has seen a 10-15% improvement in overall equipment effectiveness, a 15% reduction in manual effort, and a 12% reduction in unscheduled maintenance.
What incredible results. Well done, LTI and Eaton!
Transformation in Workforce Productivity: RealWear and Entegris
Finalists: ITC Infotech, Autoware
Entegris, a global leader in materials science, solves problems for the world’s most advanced manufacturing environments. Entegris is a manufacturing problem solver. When COVID-19 struck, the company knew it needed to transition – fast – to a remote and hands-free support model to keep its customers running smoothly.
Enter RealWear with advanced mobile headsets and Vuforia Expert Capture. Together, they provided Entegris with a hands-free way to capture expertise and share it with workers in the field. The company also adopted Vuforia Chalk for remote, on-site assistance.
This seamless solution enabled Entegris to continue to serve clients throughout the pandemic. It dramatically improved the company’s knowledge capture, training and support processes, and delivered a superior customer experience that will continue to deliver value post-pandemic.
Kudos to RealWear and Entegris for this truly cutting-edge solution.
Transformation in Enterprise PLM (Digital Thread): Accenture and US Navy
Finalists: Irisoft, CDM Tecnoconsulting SPA
Accenture is serving as prime system integrator for the U.S. Navy’s model-based product support initiative. The project selected Windchill Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as its PLM “single source of truth” solution. This initiative is important, ambitious, and far-reaching.
It will enable the Navy to combine and harmonize a multitude of legacy systems and repositories in a modern IT infrastructure. It will provide direct benefits for over 15,000 end users and supplier networks and support a vast fleet of ships and submarines. And it represents an important shift for the Navy as it moves from building isolated custom software to using best-in-class commercial off-the-shelf software.
Expected benefits include 30 times faster access to data, a 12.5% reduction in inventory, 50% reduction in cycle time on change documents, 42% improvement in new system’s development time—and over $80 million in annual cost savings.
Congratulations to both Accenture and the U.S. Navy on this deeply important, truly transformational initiative.
Looking Ahead
In closing, I would like to thank all the partners who participated in this year’s Partner Network Awards by sharing their amazing stories. Whether you were a winner, finalist or entrant, you are all leaders where it counts: helping our customers succeed. While the year ahead has its share of uncertainties, of this I am sure: no matter what the future brings, our partner ecosystem possesses the skills and determination needed to move the world forward.
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