Justifying Windchill

[jerryt]

Can someone help provide me with some basic criteria that would justify the cost of Windchill.


Background:


My company has (5) Pro/E users. If there is more than (1) of us working on the same project, we always check and work on separate items. We have a separate AS400 type database that is used to track revisions, ECN's and BOM's.


Thanks

 

[looslib]

What do you want the Windchill solution to do? Intralink will do basic CADvaulting and revisions of your parts. PDMLink will do full workflow and tracking from initial problem report through engineering and the final released ECN.


Justification has to be done on a busines case for your company. What value will you get from having the various levels of data control? Do you need other departments to see and maybe signoff on the data?

 

[shipley00]

Assuming you have only 5 people, and you are not using it for document management (non-cad), I agree with the previous poster and go intralink for now. Windchill takes some time to setup and maintain properly. For less than 50 people, Windchill is overkill and possible overly complicated.

 

[bruppert]

I'd say that for 5 users you don't need any type of PDM system unless you're looking to take advantage of what it offers beyond CAD data creation. Intralink and PDMLink take the same amount of work since they are now the same product. Intralink 3.x is not something you want to use because it's product life is over and you wouldn't be able to upgrade to Wildfire 4 with it. Unless you're suffering more from overwriting each others work or wishing you had better tracking or automated workflow, stay without one until you need it.

 

[jerryt]

Thanks to all that replied. It's clear that we should continue with our current procedures for now.

 

[dbrooks]

You should check out Design Data Manager. The software is gaining a lot of ground and getting some excellent reviews.