CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
14 January 2008
Implementation Investments
Grand River Group Expedites Catalog Updates and Production with PTC® Arbortext® Dynamic Publishing Software
PTC and Grand River Group announced that Grand River Group has significantly reduced the publishing time for its parts catalog using PTC's Arbortext Dynamic Publishing Solution. Additionally, using Arbortext, Grand River Group is now able to distribute its parts catalog online. Arbortext allows companies to create reusable components of content, both text and illustrations, and configure and publish the content for specific audiences to a variety of media types in multiple languages. Grand River Group uses Arbortext in conjunction with Windchill as part of the PTC Product Development System (PDS).
Grand River Group has established itself as an industry leader among motorcycle manufacturers in China using PTC's product development system to support its dedication to innovation and high quality standards. As a result of its rapid business expansion, the company anticipated that its parts supply business would become its fastest growing segment. However, it soon became clear that the traditional manual process of editing and publishing parts catalogs couldn't keep up with the updates of products available on the market. The discrepancy between catalog and actual product offerings caused errors in orders, impacting the quality of customer service and slowing the company's ability to take revenue on orders. Consequently, Grand River Group decided to implement a solution that would provide distributors and retailers with the most up-to-date, accurate parts information in the shortest timeframe possible.
Ultimately, Grand River Group selected Arbortext to significantly reduce the time for creating new content for the catalog while at the same time lowering the cost of publication and distribution. Since Arbortext is part of the PTC Product Development System, Grand River was also able to manage the catalog information with Windchill®. Using the service bill of materials data in Windchill, the Arbortext solution enables the automated publication of the catalog, which can be delivered in both PDF and web-based formats. Additionally, the Parts Supply Department is now able to create three separate parts catalogs for three different vehicle models weekly.
"The PTC PDS is the answer to improving our business by helping us maintain the highest customer service standards," said Deng Xiao Li, Parts Supply Department manager, Grand River Group. With the implementation of Arbortext, customers are able to purchase the parts they ordered with greater efficiency than previously available and can be confident that they will get the components they need. Additionally, the PTC PDS is capable of creating the parts catalog automatically, and publishing catalogs on a regular basis. As a result, the publishing cycle of parts catalogs has been reduced to 10 work days from the original 22 days.
"This is a great example of PTC's Product Development System providing end-to-end process support from product data to after-market catalogs," said Martin Walters, director Automotive Market Strategy, PTC. "Our solution's unique integral approach enables our customers to work faster and more efficiently than with any other solution."
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