Farnborough-based
PTC and its partner
PDSVISION have entered into a digital transformation collaboration with Electrolux Professional. The Swedish manufacturer of professional kitchen and laundry equipment is using PTC’s Windchill product lifecycle management solution to reduce the complexity of its multi-CAD design processes.
This is an essential development as the company configures its products based on the orders it receives, with thousands of customer-specific variants and options based on several product platforms.
In addition, Electrolux makes around 5,000 product changes per year and has a couple of hundred ongoing product development projects across its three business units. The engineering, manufacturing and service departments rely on many different CAD and data management systems, including PTC's Creo, SolidWorks, CATIA and Autodesk.
“We realised that we had more manufacturing locations than we ever had before, and they all differ in type of products, working methods and more," said Lars Örnholmer, Enablers Director at Electrolux Professional. Here we needed to standardise the environment, while at the same time allowing for some variation and creativity.”
Electrolux Professional decided to adopt a product platform and a modular design strategy to meet market demands while reducing complexity. In collaboration with PDSVISION, the company introduced Windchill, PTC's product lifecycle management solution.
This comprehensive PLM software also offers standardised processes for data control and traceability, which ultimately gives it order in their digital house.
Lars Örnholmer concluded: “An important reason why we chose to work with PTC was that they focused on helping us work more efficiently. In addition, PDSVISION has brought valuable expertise and they gave us the attention and support we needed to be successful with PTC’s products.”
Electrolux Professional is already seeing tremendous progress and is also exploring other parts of the PTC portfolio to drive improvements throughout the value chain. The acceleration of its digital transformation journey will create new growth opportunities for the business.