PTC and EADS Reach Milestone on PHENIXCHANGE

PTC and EADS have reachedanother milestone in their partnership around PLM, delivering the technologyand business process integration for PHENIXCHANGE, a Windchill-based platformthat is a core component of the aerospace & defense giant's vision toharmonize PLM methods, processes and tools between the various EADS businessunits.

The deal,announced in the summer of 2008, was one of the foundation pieces of EADS' PHENIX(PLM Harmonized Enhanced Innovation Excellence) initiative, a cross-divisionalattempt to standardize the PLM landscape, moving away from having multiplesoftware platforms, tools and different workflows across different functional areasand different divisions. By having an enterprise, harmonized vision of PLM,EADS is hoping to streamline increasingly complex product development andmanufacturing processes, improving communications between divisions on a globallevel, making product data more readily accessible to suppliers and fosteringdeeper integration and common workflows across previously siloed engineeringfunctions.

Much of EADS/PTC partnership centers around embedding keyEADS business processes into PTC's PLM technology. The result of this work isPHENIXCHANGE, an approach that delivers a configurable and modular technologyplatform that can be easily deployed. As the foundation technology forPHENIXCHANGE, Windchill serves as the enterprise PLM backbone, supportingconfiguration management, data management, and lifecycle management workflowsand business processes.

Now in its second release and going into production inadditional EADS business units, PHENIXCHANGE embeds standard EADS processes - sayfor example, configuration management - into the core Windchill PLM platform sothe various groups don't have to reinvent the wheel with PLM for every project.The approach is modular allowing EADS business units to pick and choose thecapabilities and business processes that are relevant for their needs, yetconfigurable, meaning the teams can modify the base processes to reflect theirspecific workflows. "We take the business process, the objects and workflowsand roles of players associated with that business process and implement themin the PLM technology as a module," explains Eric Spéciel, PTC's vice presidentof business development for Aerospace & Defense, Europe. "We're providing anenvironment where people at a program level within any EADS business unit canget on the platform, go through a series of menus and questions and configure aPLM system that encompasses all of the modules associated to their needs."

PTC also said that EADS has also committed to the maximumamount of Windchill licenses specified by the contract - around 70,000,accounting for nearly two-thirds of the EADS workforce as well as its coresuppliers. The PHENIXCHANGE platform has been deployed in various EADS businessunits, including Airbus, Eurocopter and EADS Astrium.

PTC Windchill is just one of the core platforms specifiedunder PHENIX. Dassault Systèmes' CATIA CAD,ENOVIA PDM platform and DELMIA digital manufacturing software are the keybackbone for creating the 3-D Master Reference model for digital mock-up. TheDOORS software from IBM's Rational Software division serves as the RequirementsManagement backbone and there is a simulation and integration backbone as part ofthe core PHENIX architecture.