A large medical device manufacturer wanted to fully integrate their R&D, engineering, and manufacturing organizations. This would allow a more efficient, capable and robust product development system that would help the flow of new, innovative products and never fall short on quality.
One key obstacle was the amount of data scattered across the globe in various PDM, PLM and network folders. This data needed to be organized and consolidated into a unified system with quality processes that would achieve FDA certification. This consolidation would enable individuals to access accurate data from any location at any time. Just from a CAD data perspective, there were 100’s of thousands of Solidworks files across 7+ locations around the world in 4+ PDM/PLM systems plus random network file folders.
The company partnered with Fishbowl to migrate the Solidworks PDM, PLM, CAD systems into their single global Windchill PDMLink system. A key criterion for them choosing Fishbowl was Fishbowl’s LinkExport and LinkLoader family of products. LinkExport automates the data extraction from PDMWorks and Enterprise PDM and LinkLoader automates the bulk loading into Windchill.
The Plan
The migration plan was to have separate migrations for each location. Each production migration would be able to be completed over a weekend to minimize business impact (e.g. users would check files into PDMWorks – or whatever – on Friday and then check them out of Windchill on Monday). This approach spread out the work and lowered risk since each location also needed to comply with quality audits as part of their test and production migration passes.
Results
Fishbowl successfully executed 7 migrations that consisted of 100,000+ files total. 60,000+ files came from five separate Enterprise PDM and PDMWorks systems and another 40,000+ files from network file folders. All data was bulk loaded into a single Windchill PDMLink and each migration was completed over a weekend so minimal disruption occurred. The project ROI was less than 6 months, and the increase efficiencies and innovation have resulted in huge corporate gains.
Contact Rick Passolt for more information on LinkLoader and LinkExport
