Deirdre Yee is the Senior Director of Demand Generation at ServiceMax. She collaborates with customers to help thought leaders promote their successes, build up their network, and demonstrate the transformative power of technology. Her favorite programs help top customers take the spotlight and highlight their strategies and innovation through world-class events, speaking engagements, videos, and beautiful, compelling storytelling. She creates strategic programs to add value for customers while driving customer engagement and advocacy. At home in Vermont, she and her two daughters, husband, and needy hound, Marlo, enjoy the mountains, the snow, and the summer sun.
Generac’s enterprise playbook for a scalable service digital thread
I recently had the chance to sit down with Michael Boettcher, Systems Administrator at Generac Power Systems. Like many of our industrial customers, they hit the classic inflection point where growth outpaced the operating model holding it all together. What’s interesting is how they addressed it. Not with a tool rollout, but by building a repeatable, enterprise scale operating model for their service digital thread. This blog is less about the great results they achieved (although there are many), and more about their approach.
Generac isn’t just a residential home generator company anymore. It’s now a global energy technology business operating across 30+ countries, serving hyperscalers, supporting data center infrastructure, and building integrated energy ecosystems that span generation, storage and grid support technologies with multi-plant manufacturing complexity. That kind of expansion is exciting, but it also exposes every weak link in the product and service lifecycle. And Generac felt those weak links sharply. Engineering and service were in two completely different processes with two very different data sets, making it was almost impossible to know what was actually serviceable.
Generac’s rapid expansion created a familiar pattern facing fast growing industrial businesses. Products were launching before service had the data to support them. Serviceable parts were created as disconnected copies of engineering parts. Technicians lacked visibility into accurate configurations. Leadership lacked predictability and lifecycle insight, and every wrong part order or repeat dispatch quietly eroded margin.
Then the pressure mounted even further. The shift to industrial customers and hyperscalers meant industrial customers were buying directly from Generac, unlike the residential generator business that went through dealers who had their own field technicians.
“There is no middleman anymore,” Boettcher told me. “There’s a much bigger focus on being able to provide service directly to the customer. Our service teams were rushed and stressed. They were firefighting constantly, with no visibility and no confidence in the data they had. We were missing SLAs because we didn’t have the right parts, and people were essentially putting out one fire while the next one started.”
Generac needed a model that could scale with its ambitions. And that meant thinking bigger. This wasn’t about implementing a feature but rather redesigning how Generac brings products to market and supports them in the field.
The vision: A single, scalable service digital thread
Generac already had a strong PLM backbone in Windchill. Engineering data was governed, structured and traceable. The opportunity was to extend that foundation into service without duplicating systems or creating new silos.
The company aligned around a clear enterprise vision with five key pillars:
- One governed source of product truth.
- A service BOM (SBOM) directly derived from the engineering BOM (eBOM).
- A repeatable operating model that scales across hundreds of products.
- A digital thread connecting engineering, service, technical publications and downstream systems.
- A lifecycle loop that will eventually feed service insights back into engineering.
Windchill Service Parts became the anchor for the new model, and the core of the digital thread. It allowed Generac to build an SBOM directly linked to the eBOM, with no MBOM in between. That architectural choice eliminated transformation steps where accuracy typically drifts and ensured every serviceable part has a clear lineage back to engineering.
“Every step was validated with real service teams. We didn’t move forward on anything until the people doing the work confirmed it actually solved the problem,” said Boettcher.
Generac replaced their Adobe solution with Arbortext, which was fully integrated into Windchill. That meant technical publications could now build illustrations, parts lists and procedures directly from the SBOM using live product data. In other words, whenever engineering updates a product, service content updates with it, without any manual re sync and no stale PDFs.
Engineering continues to design in Creo, with CAD structures feeding the eBOM. Because the SBOM is derived directly from that data, service teams can now see exactly what engineering designed without the need for interpretation, copy paste or parallel data sets. This brings engineering context without the need for data translation (avoiding the messy, error prone steps when engineering designs need to be interpreted, re entered or manually re structured for service). Service now sees the product exactly as engineering designed it, without any manual reconstruction.
“Because the SBOM is derived directly from Creo data in Windchill, our service teams no longer have to interpret or rebuild engineering designs,” Boettcher explained. “They get the full engineering context automatically, so no translation, no re entry and no drift.”
To close the loop, Generac is currently in the process of implementing Codebeamer to capture the voice of the customer and feed service insights back into engineering. This will complete the lifecycle loop from design to build, to service to learning, to improving.
Enterprise adoption: The hard part done well
One thing I appreciated was his honesty about the journey. Service had been working the same way for 20 years, so the shift required them to relearn the basics The first attempt at SBOM adoption didn’t work. Workflows weren’t clear. Definitions weren’t aligned. Service wasn’t fully bought in.
The second attempt succeeded because Generac treated it as an enterprise change program with executive leadership buy-in, not a technical rollout. “Service leadership became co owners of the operating model. Engineering, service and technical publications collaborated from day one,” he said. “The rollout shifted to an incremental, agile approach instead of a big bang event. PTC and third party partners were involved early and consistently, and every step was validated with real service teams. The operating model is real, repeatable and scalable. And in our internal communication, we never lost sight of our shared goal: day one service readiness.”
By linking the service digital thread, Generac gained key efficiencies across the business.
- Day One Service Readiness - Products now launch with complete SBOMs, accurate parts structures, finished illustrations and published service information.
- Traceability and Confidence - Every service part traces back to engineering. If a technician questions a part, the answer is authoritative.
- Reduced Downstream Rework - Errors are caught during development, not after products reach the field. Arbortext authoring surfaces engineering data issues early.
- Reuse Across the Portfolio - Generac’s product lines share engines, alternators, control systems and enclosures. Once a service structure is validated, it can be reused across similar configurations.
- Predictability for Leadership - Executives now have visibility into service readiness, change propagation, data quality and lifecycle cost impacts.
“Before the digital thread, we had no real handle on service part lifecycles. When something was obsoleted, we were basically using whatever scrap was left, and customers had no visibility into when parts would run out. Now we can finally manage service lifecycles with intention instead of reaction,” Boettcher said.
“Leadership could finally put real dollars to what service was spending and what they were getting out of it. Our service teams are no longer firefighting. Engineering and service speak the same language. Our technical publications author against live data. Leadership has predictability. And the entire organization is aligned around a single lifecycle model. That’s a huge leap from where we were.”
Generac’s service digital thread is now the backbone for a whole wave of future innovation. It sets the foundation for online service portals, automated content delivery, and richer lifecycle analytics. It enables true closed loop quality, supports emerging AI assisted service experiences, and creates the conditions for full integration of Codebeamer so customer insights can flow directly back into engineering.
“Connecting engineering and service through a true digital thread changed everything for us. It’s the model we’ll scale the business on. We didn’t just fix a process, we rebuilt how we work,” said Boettcher. “With the digital thread in place, our teams are aligned, our data is trusted, and we’re ready for whatever comes next.”
Up Next