Enabling shorter development cycles while managing a growing number of new models and equipment variants is not only a challenge for product development engineers, but also for technical editors serving the after market. They have to generate more maintenance and repair documents while delivering that documentation to the maintenance and repair shops faster than ever before. Porsche selected PTC Arbortext because of its ability to help customers overcome these challenges through its component-based authoring tools, the incorporation of industry standards and best practices within the solution, and its ability to publish to multiple formats such as PDF, print and web.
“In the past, our manuals were produced using different processes, software and even different hardware platforms, which made information reuse very difficult,” said Dr. Ulrich Lutz, head of after sales engineering, Porsche. “In many instances, information was already outdated before it had even reached the maintenance and repair shops. One of the main reasons for implementing PTC Arbortext as the core element of our new maintenance and repair information system was to have one single platform providing online access.”
The number of electronics control units in cars is constantly growing. As a consequence the amount of diagnostics to run is increasing. This also impacts the volume of repair and maintenance manuals necessary. As an example: The Porsche 993 has four control units, Porsche 996 contains eleven and the Cayenne has 40 control units. The manual for the Cayenne consists of 16 folders, which means more than 70,000 pages. This makes it necessary to reuse information wherever possible, thus enabling technical editors to generate more documents with the same number of staff. Moving forward, this will also enable Porsche to have the repair and maintenance manuals for the new Panamera sport limousine ready for its launch in 2009. Speed and quality of service in the repair and maintenance shops has improved considerably due to more up-to-date information, easy access via the Internet and the ability to collect failure and reliability information on-line.
“To effectively manage the increasing complexity of product development in the automotive industry, companies have to broaden their PLM initiatives beyond engineering to include technical documentation and after sales,” said Joshua Fredberg, senior vice president, product and market strategy, PTC. “We are proud that Porsche, a company built upon delivering a standard of excellence to its customers, has selected PTC as its service manual publication partner.”
About PTC Solutions for the Automotive Industry
PTC solutions for automotive are designed to meet the product design and product life cycle management needs of both OEMs and suppliers in the automotive industry. PTC provides 3D design, product data management and collaboration solutions to over 1400 automotive manufacturers including 8 of the top ten suppliers and 3 of the top 5 OEMs.
About PTC
PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) provides leading product lifecycle management (PLM), content management and dynamic publishing solutions to more than 50,000 companies worldwide. PTC customers include the world's most innovative companies in manufacturing, publishing, services, government and life sciences industries. PTC is included in the S&P Midcap 400 and Russell 2000 indices. For more information on PTC, please visit http://www.ptc.com.
Except for the historical information contained herein, matters discussed in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties include: the successful development and integration of the technology necessary to offer integrated solutions that adequately responds to the evolving dynamic enterprise publishing requirements of our customers; continued growth in the adoption of PLM solutions; PTC’s ability to cost effectively expand the functionality of our product development system, including the Arbortext suite of solutions, to areas beyond design and data management; PTC’s ability to retain and maintain relationships with strategic partners; and the market for, and customer adoption of, dynamic enterprise publishing may not grow as quickly as PTC expects, as well as other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by PTC with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's most recent reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. The announcement of any particular selection of PTC products is not necessarily indicative of the timing of recognition of revenue from such order or the level of revenue for any particular period.
PTC, The Product Development Company, Windchill, Arbortext, Mathcad,
IsoDraw, and all other PTC product names and logos are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Parametric Technology Corporation or its
subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. All other
companies and products referenced herein have trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective holders.
