Improve Quality Across the Product Lifecycle

What’s blocking quality improvement?

When your engineering, manufacturing, and service teams work from disconnected data, design decisions made in CAD (computer aided design) create tolerance mismatches that only show up on the assembly line. Requirement gaps that were never traced to test coverage create compliance exposures that only surface during audit. Field failure patterns that your service team sees every week never reach the engineering team making decisions about the next product revision.

The companies that are pulling ahead on quality are not running better inspection programs. They are preventing defects at the design stage, before any of these issues arise.

The impact of improved quality

A heightened focus on quality boosts customer satisfaction and market share through reliable performance. This emphasis creates a stronger reputation, higher uptime, and a clear competitive advantage.

93% of Manufacturers

Reported data trapped in siloed systems, a challenge that leads to duplicated efforts and late-stage firefighting.

60% of quality issues

Are introduced by design choices made in engineering, that introduce issues to manufacturing, operations and service of these products.

54% of manufacturers

Struggle with duplicate data residing in several systems.

The cost of poor quality

A quality issue that your design team misses costs roughly ten times more to fix in production than it would have at the design stage. A defect that reaches your customer costs ten times more again.

That makes every siloed engineering tool a financial risk. When your CAD, your PLM, your ALM, and your quality management system are separate platforms maintained by separate vendors, design issues fall through the gaps And when those issues reach the field, the cost stops being a quality budget problem and becomes a warranty liability.

How PTC drives quality for industrial manufacturers

PTC offers a fully connected digital thread between engineering, manufacturing, and service to build an intelligent product lifecycle.

Quality planning stays in scope automatically when designs change. FMEA and CAPA run in the same system as engineering change management in Windchill, so there’s no sync job, no escaped defects from a handoff gap.

Engineers catch performance issues during design, inside Creo, using Ansys-powered simulation without exporting geometry to a separate environment. This enables engineers to make quality-informed decisions before designs are committed.

Requirements, risks, and compliance artifacts are governed in Codebeamer and traced bi-directionally to the Windchill product record, so a hardware design change automatically flags its impact on software requirements and traceability is maintained continuously.

When your product reaches the field, ServiceMax can capture failure data your technicians encounter and push it into Windchill, enabling engineers to make improvements to future designs.

PTC solutions for quality

Windchill Product Lifecycle Management

Your FMEA, CAPA, and non-conformance processes run in the same platform as your BOM, change management, and configuration control. When a design changes, quality planning is automatically in scope because they share the same product record. No separate QMS. No integration middleware. No quality data that lags two days behind the engineering system.

Explore Windchill

Codebeamer application lifecycle management & compliance

Your product line has dozens of variants. Every one of them has its own requirements, its own compliance thread, and its own test coverage. Codebeamer governs requirements, risks, tests, and compliance. Pure Variants controls variability across software, systems, and hardware. Together, they give you a full requirement-to-BOM-variant traceability chain in one portfolio, the only one of its kind available from a single vendor.

Explore Codebeamer

Creo Computer Aided Design

Your design engineers do not need to be simulation specialists to make quality-informed decisions. Creo Simulation Live puts Ansys-powered GPU-accelerated analysis inside the Creo modelling environment running on the native geometry, in real time, as the model is being built. They catch structural issues, interference problems, and tolerance risks at the moment of design decisions.

Explore Creo

ServiceMax Service Lifecycle Management

Your technicians' field repair reports are engineering intelligence if your systems are connected. ServiceMax captures structured failure data and routes it into Windchill, where your engineers can identify aggregate failure patterns across the installed base, prioritize root cause analysis, and apply findings to the next product revision. Your service operations become your most accurate product improvement feedback loop.

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Customer success stories

Innovator Spotlight: Volvo Construction Equipment

After implementing Windchill technology from PTC, Volvo CE achieved a 30% reduction in Cost of Poor Quality (COPC) and cut the number of late engineering loopbacks that were delaying product development. For heavy equipment OEMs with razor-thin margins, that is a direct impact on profitability, not just an IT improvement.

Producing with Quality: Nidec Global Appliance

Nidec reduced costs for non-quality deliverables by 40% after unifying global product data in Windchill. With operations across multiple countries and manufacturing sites, Nidec needed a single product record that every site could work from. The outcome: fewer defects, lower rework costs, and a cleaner handoff between engineering and manufacturing.

Success Metrics Driven by PLM – Vaillant Group

28% faster change implementation. 53% improvement in first-pass sample approval. 16% reduction in rework. Three separate quality metrics, all from one Windchill implementation. For a precision heating equipment manufacturer, faster change management is not just an engineering efficiency gain; it is a quality outcome.

Innovator Spotlight: Volvo Construction Equipment After implementing Windchill technology from PTC, Volvo CE achieved a 30% reduction in Cost of Poor Quality (COPC) and cut the number of late engineering loopbacks that were delaying product development. For heavy equipment OEMs with razor-thin margins, that is a direct impact on profitability, not just an IT improvement.

Producing with Quality: Nidec Global Appliance Nidec reduced costs for non-quality deliverables by 40% after unifying global product data in Windchill. With operations across multiple countries and manufacturing sites, Nidec needed a single product record that every site could work from. The outcome: fewer defects, lower rework costs, and a cleaner handoff between engineering and manufacturing.

Success Metrics Driven by PLM – Vaillant Group 28% faster change implementation. 53% improvement in first-pass sample approval. 16% reduction in rework. Three separate quality metrics, all from one Windchill implementation. For a precision heating equipment manufacturer, faster change management is not just an engineering efficiency gain; it is a quality outcome.

What changes when your product data starts being a quality asset

Having a PLM that’s cloud-based has enabled collaboration within Welbilt even if they’re not in the same building as us. Employees could even access live updates from across the entire design team.

Justin Baker, Engineering Technologist IV at Frymaster

Read Their Story

Learn more about quality with PTC

What is a Quality Management System?

An overview of what a quality management system is and the benefits it can have for your organizations.

/en/blogs/plm/what-is-a-quality-management-system

How to Reduce Cost of Poor Quality

An overview of how to calculate and address the cost of poor quality for your organization.

/en/blogs/plm/how-to-reduce-cost-of-poor-quality

Best Practices for a Holistic, Quality-First PLM Strategy

This report shares best practices from top performing organizations on how to boost product quality, reduce operational risk, improve decision making, and more.

/en/resources/plm/report/quality-for-manufacturers

Connect with our industrial's experts

Our dedicated industrials team brings decades of industry expertise to help you accelerate your digital transformation journey and achieve quality excellence.

Dr. Florian Harzenetter

Senior Director and Global Advisor, Industrials

Dr. Florian Harzenetter on LinkedIn

Mike Marshall

Director of Growth Marketing, Industrials

Mike Marshall on LinkedIn

Alyanna Ilyadis

Senior Principal Industry Marketing Manager, Industrials

Alyanna Ilyadis on LinkedIn

“60% of Quality Issues Can Be Traced Back to Engineering”