In today’s fast-evolving industrial landscape, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has become a strategic necessity for organizations managing increasingly complex products, shorter development cycles, and stringent regulatory requirements. For Leonardo Automation, a business unit within Leonardo active in aerospace, defense, and security, the adoption of PTC’s Windchill PLM platform marks a significant step toward digital transformation.
Choosing between Product Data Management (PDM) and PLM is a pivotal decision for any organization. While PDM focuses on design and data control, PLM encompasses the entire product lifecycle—from conception to retirement. In fact, PDM can be considered a significant component of PLM.
Windchill simplifies user adoption by natively integrating a PDM system specifically designed to support enterprise-wide PLM implementation. Windchill’s flexible architecture is highly valued by users across industries and company sizes. This allows organizations to start with PDM functionalities and gradually transition to full PLM capabilities seamlessly.
Leonardo Automation designs and delivers advanced sorting systems for parcels, mail, and baggage, tailored to the unique needs of airports, postal centers, couriers, and logistics hubs. At the heart of these systems is the sorter, whose “intelligence” manages sorting and identifies routes on conveyor belts.
As explained by Luca Guaitoli, PLM Project Manager at Leonardo Automation, these are not standard, pre-assembled machines simply installed at the customer’s site. Each project is unique and highly customized, often requiring integration of third-party technologies.
Previously, Leonardo Automation’s digitalization journey was not entirely linear. The design department used various CAD tools, including PTC’s Creo and others for electrical design and BIM methodology, now a market requirement. The presence of separate design islands often led to data reconciliation errors, wasted time, and the risk of serious mistakes. PDM was managed by an outdated application, and although Windchill was present, it was used almost exclusively as a CAD repository.
This approach had several drawbacks, such as the manual exchange of data files—often via email—between departments due to the lack of a single source of truth.
Faced with the need to boost efficiency and competitiveness, Leonardo Automation launched an ambitious project aiming to innovate its product development process through data integration and centralization.
The goal was to eliminate documents—and thus data—circulating outside the system, ensuring complete traceability in a single database.
The decision was to adopt a holistic approach, entrusting a single platform with comprehensive data management. Windchill by PTC was selected. A dedicated project team, supported by Luca Guaitoli and Accenture consultants, conducted a thorough study, leading to the first implementation phase in January 2024. While the rollout is still ongoing, the transition from legacy PDM systems to an enterprise-wide PLM approach is already improving data consistency and collaboration across departments.
Today, Windchill at Leonardo Automation tracks not only the lifecycle of individual components but also entire projects and their subsets. Beyond data consistency, Windchill offers another key advantage: the ability to retrieve, modify, and reuse previously designed elements, delivering significant flexibility and time-to-market improvements.
Windchill also acts as an “engine” for coordinating interdepartmental activities, including procurement, ensuring clarity on which components to order from suppliers.
Notably, using Windchill as a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) enabled the transition from EBOM (Engineering Bill of Materials) to MBOM (Manufacturing Bill of Materials). This is a substantial step, as MBOM bridges the gap between engineering requirements and shop-floor construction, providing the production team with exact specifications.
Data compartmentalization undermines continuity, while PLM serves as the link between all departments. Before adopting enterprise PLM, Leonardo’s business unit faced data duplication and compromised operational efficiency.
Windchill introduced the concept of a “single source of truth,” centralizing data management so all departments—from purchasing to production—access consistent, up-to-date information. This approach eliminated silos, i.e., data scattered in non-communicating systems or unstructured formats.
PTC’s collaboration proved invaluable, especially through its Customer Success Management service, which supports clients with specialists to facilitate adoption and use of solutions like Windchill. The “Digital Transformation Value Roadmap” methodology helped clearly identify implementation priorities, balancing technical requirements with ROI expectations.
Within Leonardo Automation, engineering and production were most involved in this transition, over 200 people were coordinated and progressively guided through the change.
From the outset, the business unit organized workshops with PTC to assess tool capabilities and their ability to solve daily user challenges. This proactive engagement increased user alignment with the platform and highlighted the value of technical implementation, delivered with Accenture’s consulting and development services.
Although the PLM project includes further steps yet to be launched, the goal of increased efficiency was achieved in the first stage of Windchill implementation. Designing and building large, complex systems requires 360-degree control and visibility—an integrated approach only PLM can provide.
Some areas remain to be covered by PLM; for example, service is the next piece to be added to the platform architecture. The future availability of a Service BOM will further optimize service activities, benefiting accuracy, responsiveness, and customer satisfaction.
Windchill enables monitoring of the entire product lifecycle, maintaining data consistency across projects and supporting informed decision-making, such as rescheduling activities or outsourcing phases mid-project.
Ultimately, Windchill’s integration gives Leonardo Automation a significant competitive advantage by centralizing and integrating all product data, improving cross-department collaboration, reducing errors and duplication, accelerating development, and ensuring traceability and compliance throughout the product lifecycle.
Eugenio Vacca is Senior Principal Customer Success Manager at PTC, where he has been since 2012.
With over forty years of experience in PLM processes and supporting technologies, he has held various pre-sales and post-sales roles at leading companies in the consulting and software development sectors.