SofTech, Inc. News
Weil-McLain Upgrades to ProductCenter™ 8.1, Gains Further Pro/Engineer Data Management Efficiencies
ProductCenter Usability Enhancements Increase User ProductivityBURLINGTON, Mass., October 2, 2002 — Workgroup Technology Corporation (WTC) (NASDAQ: WKGP), a leading provider of collaborative product data management (PDM) software solutions, today announced that Weil-McLain is upgrading to ProductCenter™ 8.1, WTC's newest collaborative PDM software release. This upgrade will enhance Weil-McLain's ability to produce competitive products faster and support its mission of continuous product and process improvement. Weil-McLain is a leading manufacturer of commercial and residential cast iron boiler systems and has been a WTC customer since 1997.
Weil-McLain points to ProductCenter™ Integrators as a major strength of the product line, specifically the ProductCenter™ Pro/Engineer® Integrator. "When we looked at PDM solutions, no one could touch WTC's Pro/Engineer Integrator," states Bill Pier, Weil-McLain drafting manager. "WTC understands the complexities of 3D solid modeling and frankly, their PDM solution provides the stability we require, which still is an issue with other solutions. With this new release, we're impressed with its ease of use. You can conveniently access all associated product data and ProductCenter PDM capabilities from the Pro/E desktop. It's very well integrated yet, is fine-tuned to the unique characteristics of Pro/Engineer."
"The continuous usability improvements that WTC is providing with each ProductCenter release allows our users to become more efficient; less steps are required to access the PDM features, enhancing user productivity," adds Pier. "We really appreciate the way ProductCenter handles Pro/E assembly and part instances by allowing us to define generic parts, with differing parameters, such as material and thread sizes. This keeps us from having to maintain a multitude of individual parts for commonly used items, such as component fasters and plumbing fittings, and saves a lot of time. The search capability is also very helpful, being able to quickly search on descriptions or attributes to find needed items."
Prior to implementing ProductCenter, Weil-McLain used manual processes and common directory structures to manage product data. Data integrity was at risk, with multiple occurrences of product data often resulting without lock-tight controls. "With the growing extensiveness and complexity of our 3D CAD data, our product development data would be impossible to manage today without ProductCenter," remarks Pier.
ProductCenter is used to vault and manage revision/change control of design data, centralizing and providing accessibility and control of a wide spectrum of data, including Pro/Engineer and AutoCAD drawings and files, labels and other artwork, technical literature, wiring diagrams, all linked, synchronized, and current. Weil-McLain also hopes to take advantage of some of the other new features in ProductCenter 8, including enhanced attribute management and the new ProductCenter Forms and Report Editors.
About Weil-McLain
Weil-McLain is a unit of SPX Corporation. SPX is a global provider of technical products and systems, industrial products and services, flow technology and service solutions. The Internet address for SPX Corporation's home page is www.spx.com.
About Workgroup Technology Corporation
Workgroup Technology Corporation (WTC) develops, markets and supports ProductCenter™, a web-enabled, extended enterprise Collaborative Product Data Management (PDM) solution that provides document management, design integration, configuration control, change management, and enterprise integration for optimizing product development. Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, the company differentiates itself on the basis of its controlled and secure accessibility, enterprise integration, and quick adaptability of its software. Thousands of users at mid-sized and global companies are in production and benefit from WTC products, including ABB, Inc.; Eaton Corporation; FlightSafety International; General Electric Company; Goodrich Turbine Fuel Technologies; Honeywell; Millipore Corporation; Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc.; U.S. Army; and Whirlpool Corporation. The company's Web site is located at www.workgroup.com.
WTC, the WTC logo, ProductCenter, myPDM, GenView and WebLink are trademarks or registered trademarks of Workgroup Technology Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other brands, logos, products or company names are the copyrights and/or trademarks of their respective holders.
