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.
Explore ISFsoft Viewer →
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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Windchill custom development vs independent software: a strategic choice for PTC partners
When “extension” becomes a risk
In the PTC ecosystem, terms like “extensions”, “add-ons”, “plugins”, “integrations” and “custom code” are often used as if they meant the same thing. For Windchill partners, that confusion is not harmless: it directly affects project scope, delivery expectations, and who carries the long-term responsibility once the system is live.
When customers ask for capabilities beyond standard Windchill functionality, many conversations jump straight to custom development. Sometimes that is the right answer. The problem is when it becomes the default, especially for needs that repeat across customers. That is how partners quietly accumulate technical debt, rising maintenance costs, and increasing delivery risk, often without pricing those commitments properly.
What “independent software” means in a Windchill context
Independent software designed to work with Windchill is not “Windchill code”. It is a separate product with its own lifecycle, built to integrate with Windchill, leverage Windchill data, and extend functional coverage around the platform, while remaining a standalone solution.
That distinction matters because it changes the nature of the promise a partner makes. With productized software, the partner introduces a capability that is versioned, documented, supported, and improved through a vendor roadmap. With custom code, the partner often becomes the long-term owner of the solution’s evolution, compatibility, and stability.
In mature PLM environments, where similar requirements appear again and again, independent products can provide a scalable way to deliver outcomes without turning every request into a new permanent engineering obligation.
Why custom development becomes expensive after go-live
Custom work is attractive because it feels flexible and immediate. It can also generate short-term services revenue. The long-term cost, however, usually shows up after go-live: upgrades, regression testing, unexpected interactions with other systems, staff turnover, and the reality that “small” customizations are rarely small two years later.
The issue is not that custom development is bad. The issue is that recurring needs solved with repeated custom builds create complexity that does not scale. Over time, teams end up maintaining multiple variants of similar functionality across customers, which increases effort and erodes margins. In practice, partners pay for this with time, delivery capacity, and predictability.
The strategic difference: repeatability and controlled risk
The real advantage of independent software is not technical elegance; it is business scalability. PTC partners that grow profitably tend to build portfolios of repeatable offerings, using custom work selectively, only where it is truly unique.
Productized capabilities are easier to position, scope, and package. They reduce uncertainty in proposals, shorten delivery cycles, and lower the risk that a project becomes hostage to a bespoke codebase. They also make the partner’s model more resilient, because value scales through repeatability rather than through increasing complexity.
A partner decision, not just an engineering choice
Ultimately, the choice between independent software and custom development is a decision about what kind of partner business you want to build. If growth depends on one-off builds, the business scales with complexity and internal bottlenecks. If growth depends on repeatable capabilities around Windchill, the business scales with controlled risk and predictable delivery.
Custom development will always have a place. But treating it as the default for recurring requirements is rarely sustainable. In a competitive Windchill market, clarity on this point is not a technical nuance, it is a strategic advantage.
If you are a Windchill partner looking to expand your offering with repeatable, lower-risk capabilities, we’d be happy to talk about partnering >>
From PLM to after-sales: Extending the digital thread with ISFsoft and PTC Windchill
Bridging the Gaps: Specialized Tools for a Complete Digital Thread
PTC’s Windchill PLM is a powerful foundation for managing engineering data. ISFsoft enhances that foundation with targeted capabilities that connect Windchill to downstream processes and external systems—making the digital thread operational beyond the PLM core.
1. Connect: Synchronizing Windchill and ERP
ISFsoft Connect is an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that serves as the backbone of integration between Windchill and your ERP system. It ensures consistent, real-time data flow between engineering and business operations—bridging BOMs, part metadata, documentation, and lifecycle statuses across systems.
This connection eliminates manual duplication, ensures traceability, and enables better planning, procurement, and production alignment.
2. Sales & Product Configurator: From Engineering Rules to Commercial Offers
Our Product Configurator transforms engineering rules into configurable product logic, enabling accurate and error-free product definition.
The Sales Configurator uses that logic to generate customized offers, automatically aligned with engineering constraints and PLM data—reducing lead times and preventing costly misconfigurations.
Together, they bridge the gap between engineering and sales, streamlining the configure-to-order process and enhancing customer responsiveness.
3. Viewer: Visualizing Engineering Data with Precision
ISFsoft Viewer empowers technical and non-technical users to interact with complex 3D assemblies linked to Windchill. It provides instant access to exploded views, part metadata, and automated technical documentation.
This visual clarity improves communication between departments and reduces dependency on CAD experts—extending the value of engineering data throughout the organization.
4. Spare Portal: Elevating the After-Sales Experience
ISFsoft Spare Portal extends the digital thread to the post-sales environment. It allows customers and technicians to visually identify spare parts, place orders online, and access version-controlled product information—always synced with Windchill data.
The result: faster service, fewer errors, and a superior after-sales experience that boosts customer satisfaction and retention.
Enabling End-to-End Continuity
The strength of the digital thread lies in its connectivity, accuracy, and completeness. ISFsoft acts as a strategic layer over the PTC ecosystem—ensuring that the data created in engineering is not only preserved, but also leveraged across the product lifecycle.
From syncing your PLM and ERP systems, to simplifying complex configurations, enhancing 3D data usage, and digitizing spare parts management—we help companies go beyond PLM to achieve a fully integrated digital enterprise.
ISFsoft + PTC: Your End-to-End Digital Thread Partner
Digital transformation is not about isolated tools—it’s about creating a continuous flow of intelligence across your business. By complementing Windchill with specialized, interoperable solutions, ISFsoft empowers manufacturers to make real-time decisions, streamline operations, and deliver better service.
Together with PTC, we turn disconnected processes into connected value.