What complexity looks like in practice
Product complexity rarely arrives as a single problem. It shows up as three eBOMs for the same product, an option matrix that lives in a planner’s spreadsheet, and firmware versions that nobody can link to a released hardware revision. The cost is time: engineers spend hours reconciling data that the system should already hold.
How we set Windchill up for it
We model the product structure first and the workflows second. That means agreeing on part classification, end-item and configurable-module boundaries, and how options and choices map to your sales catalogue before anyone touches a workflow template.
Typical building blocks:
- Options and variants with choice rules validated against real orders from the last twelve months.
- Multi-domain structure where ECAD, MCAD and software items are managed as parts, not just documents.
- Effectivity by date, serial or lot so downstream teams see the structure that applies to them.
- Baselines and views that let manufacturing and service work from a stable snapshot.
What you get
A structure that answers “what exactly did we ship to that customer?” in seconds, and a change process that knows which variants a change touches.