What's the news with this release?
Windchill 9.1 offers improved support for key product development processes, plus a range of improvements in enterprise product content management, usability, and supportability.
Briefly, which product development processes are enhanced in Windchill 9.1?
Manufacturing Process Management (MPM). With Windchill 9.1, PTC improves the capabilities of Windchill MPMLink through the addition of out-of-the-box integrations to SAP and Oracle ERP systems, support for alternative bills-of-materials, and a new Gantt explorer for viewing/analyzing process plans and for exporting this information to Microsoft Project.
Design Outsourcing
Windchill 9.1 introduces “packages” which enables users to create, deliver and track packages of Windchill managed information, allowing offline Windchill information access to partners outside your Windchill system. Additionally, Windchill 9.1 adds a remote vaulting capability to its files servers, meaning locally created content can be housed exclusively in the local file server without needing to be transfer to the master server.
Detailed Design
Design efficiency has been enhanced with improved Pro/ENGINEER data management, and support for Heterogeneous Design-in-Context (HDIC). These HDIC improvements allow users to incorporate Unigraphics NX and CATIA V5 designs managed by Windchill PDMLink directly into their Pro/ENGINEER designs. Additionally, Windchill 9.1 offers expanded support for ECAD data management as well as ProductView ECAD Compare and ProductView Validate, enabling unique, standards-based ECAD-MCAD collaboration.
Variant Design and Generation
Windchill PDMLink introduces support for managing product options typical of assemble-to-order development. With these new capabilities, customers now have a more streamlined approach to manage discrete lists of options for a product line and navigate the product by these option sets.
Change & Configuration Management
Windchill 9.1 introduces several enhancements for change management, including support for mass change, and a new change summary report.