1. Why do I need to do regular maintenance on my PTC Windchill system?
Critical systems, like Windchill PLM, must be available to users. This is why it is so important to do regular maintenance on your PTC Windchill system. Windchill system outages can be costly and impact system adoption and usage. Therefore, it is recommended that you complete regular, preventative maintenance to identify and resolve issues before they cause performance problems or service interruptions.
2. What is included in the Alliance program?
We start by assessing your department and company’s needs. We combine the assessment results with our understanding of successful Windchill implementations and deliver recommendations and a plan for a stable, high-performance Windchill instance. The flexibility of the Alliance program allows us to configure an engagement as needed. This gives us the ability to tailor the program specifically to your company.
3. Can my staff complete the Windchill maintenance activities?
Certainly! Keep in mind that preventative Windchill maintenance tasks are commonly an afterthought, and other projects are likely to take precedence. As the staff becomes busier, their dependence on a functioning Windchill system increases. These would be times when a system outage during a critical project could prove to be disastrous.
4. Can you train my staff to complete Windchill maintenance tasks?
Yes, in fact we would love to help train your staff how to complete Windchill maintenance tasks. EAC has PTC certified instructors that are available to deliver all of the Windchill Business and System Admin training courses offered by PTC. After attending these classes your staff will be ready to take on their new Windchill responsibilities. Additionally, we can provide mentoring with our Windchill experts to answer all of your Windchill maintenance questions.
5. What are some benefits of using the EAC Alliance program?
One of the core benefits of the EAC Alliance Program is the ability to take a proactive approach to maintaining your Windchill system – ensuring high availability and performance. By completing regular system maintenance and software updates you are able to better leverage your PTC investment. You can also eliminate the need to maintain a staff of Windchill Administration experts by assigning these system and business admin tasks to our EAC’s expert consultants. Our Windchill consultants have years of experience and complete these same activities on a daily, weekly and monthly basis for many Alliance Program customers.
6. Are Windchill system updates and upgrades included in the Alliance Program?
Yes, the EAC Alliance Program can be structured to include Windchill system updates and upgrades. When you include this in your Alliance Program you can easily budget a fixed cost over the upcoming months and years.
7. Can you support my Global company?
Yes. While EAC is based in the United States, we are part of the PTC Strategic Partner network giving us access to many additional resources overseas. We call on these partners to help with implementation, training, and support services local to international facilities.
8. Are you able to provide 24/7 Windchill support?
Yes. We can provide your company access to our support case submission system, which will allow your Windchill users to log cases at any time of day. If emergency Windchill support is required (noted by the priority level assigned to your case), our team will be notified immediately and begin support. If you require overseas support, and international support is included in your Alliance Program agreement, we will coordinate with a local PTC partner to address the issue.
9. Doesn’t my PTC Maintenance agreement include similar Windchill services?
No. Your PTC maintenance agreement covers all Windchill updates to software that you have purchased as well as technical support should you have a problem that requires resolution. It does not include the services necessary to update, upgrade and maintain your Windchill system.
10. How much does the EAC Alliance Program cost?
This varies based on the complexity of your Windchill environment and the level of support you would like to include in your service level agreement (SLA). This can be determined by having a quick conversation with your team and proposing a solution that correctly addresses your needs. Contact us today for further information!
Windchill is a mission-critical enterprise system with multiple components and touch points across an entire enterprise. Because of this complexity, you might recognize the need for Windchill Managed Services.
EAC has created a managed services program for your Windchill system – The EAC Alliance Program. The Alliance Program provides PTC Windchill managed services such as Windchill administration and support.
Our team of expert system administrators help improve system performance, optimize server and license configurations, and maintain a stable PLM environment for your organization.
Here’s what customer’s see with our Windchill Managed Services and what you can expect.
Windchill Managed Services Percent of Uptime
95.1% of our EAC Alliance Program customers achieve 100% Windchill uptime. Our customers that do not have 100% Windchill uptime still maintain over 99% availability. This is an overall average of 99.95% or more uptime.
Windchill Managed Services Predictive Maintenance
Our Alliance program executes planned (weekly, monthly, etc) Windchill maintenance. Predictive maintenance is more efficient and the preferred approach to system maintenance. Roughly 1/4 of Alliance customers choose to implement PTC System Monitor (PSM) as a way to bolster EAC’s already rigorous proactive maintenance.
Speed/Performance of Windchill with Managed Services
100% of EAC’s Alliance Program customers see an improvement in the speed and performance of their Windchill system. Out of the box, Windchill leaves a lot of room for performance tuning and server optimization. Our EAC Alliance Program Team are skilled in analyzing and optimizing system resources to suit your individual needs
Windchill Managed Services Security/Patches
100% of our EAC Alliance customers receive (or are notified) of patches. This way you can be assured that your system is running with maximum security at all times.
Want to learn more about what our EAC Alliance Program has to offer? Download our Alliance Program Brochure and check out the top 10 questions we get about our Windchill Managed Services.
Having more technical illustrations than information is beneficial in many ways—and the solution to do so is easier than you think.
Here’s why you should be using more technical illustrations and the best way to create them.
Technical Illustrations are Easy to Understand
We all know the saying “ a picture paints a thousand words”—and in this case, it’s more than true.
It’s much easier to interpret a picture than to understand and read through lots of text. Using illustrations in tech pubs, user manuals, and service manuals reduce user errors.
Illustrations Take Away the Need for Text
Have you ever bought anything from Ikea? Sure you have! They sell their flat pack furniture all over the globe using the same manuals. That is the power of illustrations. You can drastically reduce the amount of text that is needed by producing illustrations.
Using Technical Illustrations Reduces the Need for Translation
With less text that is needed or used, you can reduce your translation costs.
So Why Doesn’t Everyone Use Illustrations?
The traditional process to create illustrations is time-consuming and can be froth with problems.
Let me illustrate it for you.
Odds are if you are using the traditional illustration process, your technical illustrators most likely work with engineers to get snapshots of CAD information to use in illustrations.
These snapshots are usually static because they are captured at only a moment in time, usually near the end of the product development process.
Because the illustrations are static, they are not always easy to interpret. This means the text is still required to properly convey the information.
If your snapshots were taken at the end of the product development process because there was ‘ less likelihood of the product changing’ – you could be delaying your shipment process.
Often a product cannot ship until the technical information that is associated with it is ready to ship with the product.
Now consider all the back and forth communication between both the engineering department and the illustration group.
Traditional illustrations are difficult to keep up to date. Commonly the illustrator needs to go back to the engineer for updates every time there is a change to the product.
If at any time there is a miscommunication, your illustrations could easily become inaccurate; exposing your organization to the risk of unsatisfied customers, frustrated field technicians, and the possibility of lawsuits.
It’s easy to see why the traditional methods to create illustrations are downright time consuming and prone to error.
So How Can You Make Technical Illustrations Easily?
The answer is Creo Illustrate.
Creo Illustrate leverages CAD data to create illustrations that, depending on your PDM/PLM setup, maintain an associative link to the original CAD data.
This means any changes you make with your CAD data can automatically update all your illustrations and possibly your publications.
With Creo Illustrate you have the ability to start creating illustrations early on in the product development process, with a guarantee that your illustrations are always kept up-to-date. Start developing product documentation during the product development process instead of after the product development process.
See Creo Illustrate in action! Watch this short video.
Here’s why engineering processes affect services and why streamlining information could solve the whole problem.
The Problem: Lack of Communication
Let’s be honest, engineering and manufacturing departments do not always communicate product changes to service. This is just the start of how your engineering processes affect services.
The Result: High Costs
When technicians reference outdated product information and arrive with incorrect parts, this leads to longer service visits, extraneous costs, longer downtime, and lowered customer satisfaction.
The Solution: Streamlining Information
Streamline the way you service teams access and use product information. The best way to accomplish this involves accurately transforming eBOMs (engineering bill of materials) to sBOMs (service bill of materials) and maintaining the fidelity of that information after engineering changes.
It’s time to stop letting your engineering processes affect services.
Take full advantage of the product data your organization has already created.
Structure service manuals and part information based on how a specific product is configured and serviced. Reuse engineering and manufacturing data in the service environment. Provide configuration-specific information to service technicians. Create a single point of access for your service content. Avoid text – use and repurpose graphics, animations, and CAD information when possible. And link service information to engineering information so changes propagate.
Next: Identify Your Service Needs
Identify what should go in your sBOM to ensure your sBOMs meet the needs of the service department. Examples might include what is serviceable versus what is replaceable, the status of a part, the components, models, grouped items, and more.
The Goal: Transforming Your Services
Remember: the ultimate goal is to make your customers happy. As a result of combining best practices with the right technology to support service and parts information management and publication you will see a higher customer satisfaction, improved technician effectiveness, improved brand reputation, higher profitability (due to lower revenue and service cost), time savings, and higher revenue (from repeat business and customer loyalty).
We have a team of technical communications specialists that would love to talk with you about your current state and current initiatives…
There’s no question about it, in business, we all have an area for improvement- and for many companies, this ‘area” has to do with service. Here’s how to deliver higher levels of service.
According to PTC, and this infographic, a recent survey of more than 100 service leaders by Tech-Clarity discovered 54% of respondents experience poor customer satisfaction due to poor service information.
Think about how poorly managed service information could be impacting your customers and costing your organization money. It’s time to deliver higher levels of service. We can’t wait to show you how.
Look at Current Processes
The first step to improving service delivery and documentation requires an in-depth analysis of how you currently manage service information. In order to successfully achieve higher levels of service, you must evaluate all aspects of your current people, processes, and technology.
Recognize Areas for Improvement Needed to Deliver Higher Levels of Service
There is always room for improvement! For example, do your service leaders need to search multiple locations to gather all required information? Have you ever-experienced situations where changes made during production were not documented? Would you say that your information is intuitively structured for service? Do you fully understand how product changes impact service? The list goes on and on, but it’s important to recognize the areas your organization may struggle with in order to take your service delivery to the next level.
Realize the Costs of Your Challenges
Try to quantify what service challenges cost your organization. Companies dealing with poor service information management face real financial repercussions. Some of these business costs include poor customer satisfaction, extended downtime, high service labor costs and even damaged service and brand reputation and more. You must realize the cost your organization faces from poorly managed service information if you ever intend to achieve higher levels of service.
Determine Your Needs in-order to Achieve Higher Levels of Service
This is the part where you align business goals with initiatives. Perhaps for your organization, this could be as simple as getting product information to the field sooner. Maybe your company would flourish by connecting technical information to product support and field operations. What would happen if your company could ensure engineering CAD models remain linked so that information never became outdated? How might a new focus on improving technician productivity by getting the right people the information and parts at the right time, benefit you? Could your organization greatly benefit from an ability to leverage existing engineering data to produce service content? Whatever your needs are, it’s important to define them in order to achieve higher levels of service throughout your organization.
Realize That Technology Is Your Key To Success
The truth is, the right service information management solutions can greatly improve your service levels. You could avoid many costly challenges by using software that dynamically publishes and delivers service information based on engineering and product data within a Product Data Management (PDM) or Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system.
Just imagine, if your company implemented the right technology to manage service information, you could:
- Enable your technicians to find, understand and trust your product and part information.
- Reduce customer downtime by improving first-time fix rates.
- Increase service and technician efficiency.
- Significantly lower overall service costs by reducing unnecessary repeat service visits.
- Improve your brand reputation through superior service.
By selecting the right software, your technicians will improve their ability to find, understand, and trust product parts information. Doing this will help your organization achieve higher levels of service and increase revenue. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to achieve higher levels of service and success.
Download the Service Transformation Journey Ebook
To create accurate, up-to-date technical information, 84% of OEMs reuse engineering data – converting engineering bills of materials (eBOMs) into service bills of materials (sBOMs).
This eBook details the successes companies in the aerospace, automotive, and other industries have experienced as a result of transforming their eBOMs into sBOMs. Download now to read their stories.
Help us help you! We know your Windchill System is critical, that’s why we designed a program just for you.
Some estimate that 70% of companies do not regularly perform routine maintenance on their Windchill System. Were on a mission to change that.
In an effort to provide on-going technical support, business process consulting and adoption services; EAC offers the Windchill Alliance Program (Services). This is a service package intended to provide professional Windchill maintenance and administration services, regardless of a customer’s stage of adoption.
Our team of expert technicians will improve your system performance, optimize server and license configurations, and ultimately maintain a stable PLM environment for your organization.
After receiving your FREE Windchill System Checkup and becoming a customer, here’s what you will receive:
System and Application Administration
This includes everything from starting and stopping your Windchill environment to cleaning up unreferenced files and cache folders. Let our team do the busy work of monitoring and managing your system so you can get the most out of your Windchill investment.
Database Administration
The EAC Alliance team will review, restore, and analyze your database growth and performance. Our database administration covers anything and everything from network administration, security administration, and backup services. Put us in-charge of performing and verifying your scheduled system backups to ensure your system is running properly.
Business Administration
We will take care of all your Windchill business administration needs such as adding new roles, updating accounts, operating system maintenance, network administration, license usage reporting and more.
End-User Support
Our end user support consists of everything from help desk support, to advice on best practices, to user mentoring, to Alliance Program review meetings and more. We want to help you with all your system questions and needs.
Still want to learn more? Check out our article on the Top 10 Questions we get about our EAC Alliance Program.
Also, Here’s what customer’s see with our Windchill Managed Services and what you can expect as an EAC Alliance Customer!
Our goal is to help you increase your Windchill system uptime, eliminate corrupt workspaces, improve sluggish system performance, safeguard your security, and guarantee your system is up-to-date. Take a proactive approach to maintaining your Windchill environment today!
