How Simon connected engineering and manufacturing across four continents with ISFsoft Viewer
Simon designs and manufactures electrical switches, sockets, lighting, and connectivity solutions for markets across the globe. With over 200 engineers based in Barcelona and China, and manufacturing plants operating in Brazil, Mexico, India, and Poland, the company runs a genuinely international product development operation. A decision made in Barcelona has direct consequences on a factory floor thousands of kilometres away.
Keeping engineering and manufacturing aligned at that scale is not a given. It requires more than a good PLM system. It requires that the people who need engineering data can actually get to it, reliably, and without depending on someone else to retrieve it for them.
That was the problem Simon needed to solve.
The situation before Viewer
Simon's engineering team works in PTC Windchill. Their product data, assemblies, components, drawings and specifications, is structured, versioned, and controlled inside the PLM environment. But Windchill access was limited to the engineering team. Manufacturing teams at international sites had no direct, reliable way to consult that data.
The result was a gap between what engineering knew and what manufacturing could act on. Errors were surfacing too late, at the manufacturing phase, when the cost of fixing them is significantly higher than catching them upstream. An initial attempt to bridge this with PTC Navigate View licenses proved difficult to scale across a geographically distributed organization with multiple sites, each with its own operational reality.
Something more flexible was needed.
The solution: ISFsoft Viewer as the access layer
ISFsoft Viewer was implemented in combination with PTC Navigate View, providing a dedicated visualization server that makes Windchill data accessible to non-engineering teams, without requiring PLM licenses or expertise.
A Windchill workflow was configured to publish data automatically to the Viewer server, distributing up-to-date engineering information from Barcelona to manufacturing plants in Brazil, Mexico, India, and Poland. The moment engineering updates something in Windchill, that change becomes available to every site through Viewer.
The rollout was gradual and site-driven. Rather than imposing a uniform change across four countries at once, each manufacturing plant defined its own adoption timeline and product strategy. This meant the implementation could flex around operational realities, reducing friction and accelerating actual adoption on the ground.
The results across 150 users
With ISFsoft Viewer in place, manufacturing teams at every site now have direct access to current engineering data. The impact has been visible across several dimensions.
Error discovery moved upstream. Manufacturing teams can now identify issues before they reach the production floor, reducing the cost and disruption of rework. The engineering team, no longer fielding data access requests from across four time zones, recovered significant capacity.
And for the first time, every site, Barcelona, Brazil, Mexico, India, Poland, is working from the same version of the truth.
But the most significant outcome may be structural. With Viewer providing a reliable, shared view of engineering data across the organization, Simon had the foundation it needed to go further: moving from folder-based project management to a structured, Windchill-based PLM approach. Viewer was not just a fix for the access problem. It was the trigger for a broader shift in how Simon manages its product data at a global level.
A bridge that scales
What the Simon implementation illustrates is a pattern that applies across manufacturing organizations of similar complexity: the value of a PLM system is not just in the data it holds, but in how accessible that data is to the people who need to act on it.
ISFsoft Viewer connects to Windchill and exposes the relevant data, assemblies, components, drawings and attributes, through an interface that manufacturing, quality, procurement, and other teams can use without training, without licenses, and without creating risk to the PLM environment. For multi-site organizations, it also solves the synchronization problem by design: one source, one published view, always current.
Does your manufacturing team have direct access to Windchill data?
If your engineering team is the gatekeeper of data that manufacturing, quality, or procurement need to do their work, ISFsoft Viewer is designed to change that, without disrupting your existing PLM environment.
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More real-world examples
Simon is one of several manufacturing companies that have transformed the way they connect engineering and production with ISFsoft. Explore more case studies to see how other teams are getting more out of their Windchill investment.
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How Figueras Seating eliminated manual data management in Windchill without changing their PLM
There is a situation that many Windchill environments share, even in companies that have invested heavily in PLM: the system holds the data, but people are still doing the work of moving it.
Every new project triggers a wave of manual tasks. Items created one by one. BOMs copied and adjusted by hand. Files sent to suppliers without any guarantee they are the right version. And underneath it all, a Windchill environment quietly filling up with outdated and duplicated content that no one has time to clean.
This is not a technology problem in the sense that Windchill is broken. It is a workflow problem — and it tends to go unnoticed precisely because teams adapt to it. They build routines around the gaps. Until the volume grows too large, or a mistake costs too much, or someone stops to calculate how many engineering hours are spent on data management instead of engineering.
Figueras Seating reached that point.
A precision business with a manual data problem
Figueras designs and manufactures premium seating for auditoriums, theatres, cinemas, and stadiums in more than 150 countries. Every installation is different: seat dimensions, curvature, positioning, and finish are all defined by the specific geometry of each venue. There is no off-the-shelf configuration — each project is a custom engineering exercise.
That level of customization generates a high volume of items, versions, and CAD documents. And for every project, that data had to be loaded manually into their ERP system (Microsoft Navision), with no automated connection between PLM and ERP.
The consequences were predictable, though no less costly for being so.
The four problems that were costing the most
1. Loading project data into Windchill and ERP was slow, manual, and error-prone
Each new project meant creating and updating items one by one across both systems. With complex, customized BOMs — where every seat in a venue can have its own configuration — the volume of manual input was significant. And manual input means inconsistencies: data that does not match between systems, items created with errors, versions that diverge.
The time cost was real. So was the risk. In a business where every installation is unique and tolerances are tight, a data error does not stay in a spreadsheet — it travels downstream into production.
2. Windchill was accumulating noise it could not clean itself
Without an automated and controlled flow for creating and updating items, obsolete and duplicated content builds up over time. Items that were replaced but never removed. Versions that should have been superseded but were not. A PLM environment that was meant to be the single source of truth was instead becoming a source of uncertainty.
Cleaning this manually is time-consuming and disruptive. Most teams deprioritize it. The noise grows.
3. Errors in data became errors in production
When the connection between engineering data and manufacturing is handled by people rather than systems, the margin for error is wide. An outdated BOM reaching the shop floor. A component specified incorrectly because the item in ERP did not reflect the latest version in Windchill. Rework, delays, costs that should not have been there.
In high-precision, high-customization manufacturing, the cost of a data error is not just the error itself — it is everything that flows from it before anyone catches it.
4. Suppliers and partners were working without version certainty
Distributing project documentation to external partners — suppliers, subcontractors, site teams — was done without a controlled mechanism to ensure they always received the correct, current files. 2D drawings and 3D models sent outside Windchill lose their connection to the source. Someone builds from a drawing that has since been updated, and no one necessarily knows until it becomes a problem on site.
What changed with Windchill Utilities
Two applications from the Windchill Utilities suite addressed these problems directly.
Bulk Creation & Update Tools introduced an automated, Excel-driven interface between Windchill and Navision. Instead of creating and updating items manually in each system, the team now manages data through a structured process that keeps both platforms consistent. The Windchill mBOM and the ERP BOM for each project stay aligned, without manual synchronization.
Download Baseline Components gave the team a controlled mechanism for distributing project documentation externally. Files — primary content, attachments, and object representations — are grouped into structured baselines directly from Windchill, ensuring that suppliers and partners always receive the correct version of 2D and 3D files. Windchill remains the single, authoritative source.
The results
- Manual input eliminated across complex, customized BOMs — significantly reducing both time and errors when loading project data.
- Obsolete and duplicated items no longer accumulate, removing the overhead of periodic cleanup and restoring confidence in the PLM environment.
- Fewer errors reaching production, with a direct impact on rework costs, delivery speed, and product quality.
- Suppliers and partners always receive the correct, up-to-date file versions — distributed directly from Windchill baselines.
- A stable, maintainable environment that can evolve alongside both Windchill and ERP without accumulating technical debt.
Is your team spending engineering hours on data management?
If any of the situations above feel familiar, the gap is likely not in your PLM platform — it is in the workflow connecting it to the rest of your operation.
Windchill Utilities by ISFsoft is a suite of productivity applications designed to automate routine tasks, eliminate manual data management, and keep your Windchill environment clean, consistent, and ready to scale.
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See how other manufacturers are working smarter with Windchill
Figueras is not the only company that has transformed the way it manages engineering data. Explore more real-world examples of how ISFsoft helps manufacturing teams eliminate inefficiencies, connect their systems, and get more out of their PLM investment.
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From engineering data to production control: aligning Windchill and ERP in high-growth manufacturing
In Barcelona, Stark Future is redefining performance in the electric motorcycle industry. With more than 100 engineers and operating in one of the fastest-growing segments of the global EV market, the company combines engineering excellence with an ambitious growth strategy. But in high-velocity manufacturing environments, innovation alone is not enough. Without structural control, growth quickly exposes weaknesses in data management and system integration.
At a critical stage of its expansion, Stark Future faced a challenge that is common in fast-scaling industrial companies: how to transform engineering data into production-ready structures without losing accuracy, traceability or time.
The challenge: aligning Windchill with ERP reality
Stark Future’s engineering environment was based on Windchill PLM from PTC, where product structures were defined and managed as Engineering Bills of Materials (EBOM). However, translating those EBOMs into Manufacturing Bills of Materials (MBOM) ready for production — and reliably connecting that information to Microsoft Dynamics ERP — was not automated.
The transition relied heavily on manual data handling. Engineering and manufacturing teams were not fully synchronized at system level, and changes required effort to track and validate. In practice, this meant product structures were exposed to inconsistencies, delays and operational risk. At the pace Stark Future was growing, this gap between PLM and ERP could quickly become a structural bottleneck.
The problem was not the quality of engineering. It was the absence of a controlled, automated integration layer between Windchill and the ERP.
The solution: structured integration with ISFsoft Connect
To address this challenge, ISFsoft Connect was introduced as the integration layer between Windchill and Microsoft Dynamics. The objective was clear: establish a structured, automated and governed data flow between engineering and manufacturing, eliminating manual intervention wherever possible.
The project began with a thorough pre-analysis phase to define scope, risks and integration requirements. Particular attention was given to defining precise EBOM-to-MBOM transformation rules, ensuring that what engineering designed in Windchill could be consistently and accurately translated into a manufacturing structure aligned with ERP processes.
Rather than treating PLM and ERP as separate initiatives, the approach aligned both environments from the outset. The integration ensured that product releases, revisions and changes could move between systems in a controlled and traceable way, creating a reliable digital thread across the organization.
The focus was not limited to technical connectivity. It was about long-term reliability and scalability. In high-growth contexts, short-term fixes create long-term instability. The objective was to build a foundation capable of supporting Stark Future’s expansion without constant rework or manual corrections.
The impact: a single source of truth at a decisive moment
The results were structural. Stark Future established a reliable method to derive MBOM from EBOM, fully connected to the ERP and free from manual duplication. Errors associated with manual data entry during product structure development were eliminated. Product releases became instantly controlled, and change management gained full traceability across systems.
Most importantly, the company achieved what every fast-growing manufacturer needs: a single source of truth between Windchill and ERP. Engineering and manufacturing now operate on synchronized data, reducing risk and increasing operational confidence at a critical stage of growth.
In industries evolving as rapidly as electric mobility, scalability depends on integration discipline. Stark Future’s case demonstrates that aligning Windchill with ERP through a structured integration layer is not simply a technical improvement — it is a strategic enabler of controlled growth.
If your company uses Windchill and is struggling to reliably integrate it with your ERP, we can help you design a controlled, scalable integration strategy. Contact ISFinnovation to explore how to eliminate manual bottlenecks and establish a true digital backbone between PLM and ERP.