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Meet the Windchill Customer Council
by Ron Watson, PTC/USER Director of Windchill Operations
With the annual PTC/USER World Event just weeks away, it’s a good time to introduce Pro/files readers to the Windchill Customer Council (WCC). Through this partnership, PTC/USER and PTC are helping to assure the success of global users of the PTC suite of software products. The PTC/USER mission of providing educational support and services aligns well with PTC’s advancement of product development solutions, creating an operating model that is unique in the industry.
Closer integration of users of Windchill with those of Pro/ENGINEER and now Arbortext will enhance information exchange, learning, and networking opportunities for all PTC/USER members. The fact that Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 is a subset of Windchill PDMLink provides a common framework for knowledge sharing.
A Little Background
Back in the late 1990s—before the advent of the “Link” solutions, Windchill was a highly customized application at many PTC customer sites. In several cases, these same companies were implementing a Product Data Management (PDM) system for the first time.
To understand the challenges that their Windchill customers were up against, PTC invited a select group to a meeting at PTC headquarters in 2002. As its primary purpose, this group—known as the Windchill Customer Advisory Council—was to help PTC gain clearer insight into the strategic issues related to Windchill implementation. The makeup of the membership differed from that of traditional PTC/USER Technical Committees, comprising senior managers (vice presidents of IT, CIOs, etc.) focused on the strategic and business benefits of an enterprisewide PDM system.
The Windchill Customer Advisory Council was initially independent of PTC/USER. But in late 2003, PTC approached the Board of Directors to discuss how the council might be brought into the PTC/USER organization. The PTC/USER Board agreed to this request, recognizing the value it would bring to the user community in light of the increasingly close integration of Windchill and Pro/ENGINEER.
The PTC/USER Windchill Customer Council (WCC), as it is now known, was formed in May 2004. As its mission, the WCC serves as a common voice of PTC customers in the areas of strategic direction and implementation of Windchill applications. The WCC provides recommendations, feedback, issues, and direction to PTC based on our mutual business requirements.
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| Windchill Customer Council Companies and Representatives |
| AGCO |
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Eric Froebel |
| Bose |
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Bill Jackson |
| Boston Scientific |
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Marc White |
| EMC |
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Charles Foster
Dave Maineri |
| Guidant |
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Eric Neumann |
| ITT |
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Ron Watson |
| PING |
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Dan Shoenhair |
| Pitney Bowes |
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Amy Handmaker
Patrick Leahy |
| Plug Power |
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Jeff Zemsky |
| Reebok |
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Chris Murray |
Solar Turbines
(Caterpillar) |
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Dan Glenn |
| Stanley Works |
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Russ Szpot |
| Steris |
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Bob Priest |
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PTC and PTC/USER jointly select members for the WCC on the basis of market, size, maturity, and types of Windchill applications. The council was originally made up of major customers only in the Boston area (to minimize travel costs), but has since expanded to include representatives from companies around the world (see sidebar).
How It Works
The WCC interfaces with the PTC/USER Windchill Technical Committees but communicates strategic direction for the Windchill TC to execute the technical changes required. To manage this delicate balance, the Windchill TC leader who serves on the council is also a senior manager concerned with strategic business issues. Jeff Zemsky from Plug Power currently serves in these two important capacities.
Another balancing challenge is managing the relationship between the PTC/USER Board of Directors and PTC’s senior management (see diagram). I serve as chair of the WCC and Director of Windchill Operations for the PTC/USER Board. The primary WCC interface with PTC executive management is through Mark Hodges, the long-time liaison with PTC/USER.
The WCC holds two or three face-to-face meetings each year at PTC’s headquarters, depending on need and subject matter. During these sessions, we first meet as a group (with no PTC representatives present) to share the status of and lessons learned from our respective implementations. But more important, we firm up a common set of priorities to deliver to PTC.
WCC members also meet periodically via webcasting. In some cases, the webcasts are scheduled with PTC as a way to review updates on specific action items or provide feedback on strategic direction. In other cases, we meet independently to facilitate knowledge exchange or discuss a priority issue that we have brought, or need to bring, to PTC’s attention.
As our processes and team evolve, our goal is to tighten the relationship between the strategic business leaders and the technical leaders in Windchill user companies. By pooling our vast knowledge and experience to drive PTC development via a single “voice of the customer,” the broader Windchill customer base will derive better value from their software investments.
What’s on the Table
At the upcoming WCC meeting on April 19, 2006, a key topic is refining the value case around migrating from the Windchill Foundation applications to the “Links” and upgrading from one major release to another. Other important agenda items are the strategic direction of the Arbortext and Polyplan integrations with Windchill, as well as strategies for complying with CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and Sarbanes-Oxley. We will provide an update on these discussions in future issues of Profiles Magazine. 
Ron Watson is Global Product Data Manager at ITT Fluid Technology/ITT Motion & Flow Control. He can be reached at ronald.watson@itt.com.
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