Customer Testimonials

Hess Services, Inc., understands the product development challenges facing many small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Founded in 1989 as an industrial and petroleum equipment refurbishing company, Hess Services, has grown to over 140 employees and offers design and manufacturing services for oil well servicing rigs, petroleum surface production equipment, and steel and fiberglass tanks. Like many small companies, Hess Services lacked the technology infrastructure to support the company’s growth, tripling in size during the past three years with an 82% growth in annual revenue from 2007-2008. As a first step to resolve this challenge, the company standardized on PTC Pro/ENGINEER® to provide the scalable, powerful design capabilities it needed to handle large, complex assemblies consisting of more than 3,000 components. The use of Pro/ENGINEER has reduced production costs by as much as 30% due to eliminated rework. It has also helped optimize product development by streamlining the design review process, making it easier to communicate design changes to customers.

In order to support its business initiatives for expansion into new markets, Hess Services is pursuing ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) pressure vessel certification, which requires the demonstration of a document control system. The company recognized that its current system, based upon the use of pdf files and shared network folders, was inefficient and prone to errors - impacting quality, productivity and costs. To accomplish its objectives, Hess Services needed a solution that would enable its design teams to share and revise product information without overwriting each other’s work, provide version control and offer the capabilities to search and reuse product development information. After a thorough evaluation of available solutions, Hess Services chose Windchill ProductPoint as its entry point to product lifecycle management.

Windchill ProductPoint represents the combination of the Microsoft® SharePoint social computing platform with PTC’s expertise in product development, essentially making social product development an easily accessible reality. In that vein, Windchill ProductPoint helps teams to connect to each other in a variety of ways including:

Instant access to colleagues via presence detection
Personalization of workspaces to organize relevant content
The sharing of rich product information throughout the company and with their customers
Windchill ProductPoint provides key benefits including:

Quick search and find for the latest versions of the right files, driving greater team productivity
Extend access to engineering content throughout the company, enabling more reuse and better decision-making
Foster timely information sharing among team members through the use of the SharePoint Web 2.0 social computing capabilities such as blogs, wikis, and on-line presence detection
Begin using quickly with a fast and easy deployment on top of an existing or new SharePoint Server, reducing total cost of ownership
Adopt with a minimal learning curve, due to the familiar user interface and integrated environment
“Windchill ProductPoint solves a major dilemma for us - Hess Services has outgrown the use of pdf files and shared folders for collaboration and file versioning,” Chief Engineer, Hess Services, Inc. “Windchill ProductPoint offers us a ‘right-sized’ PLM solution that can be quickly and easily deployed on our SharePoint platform and will provide immediate value for our product development team by increasing productivity, efficiency and quality.”

“Windchill ProductPoint meets the PLM needs of small and medium-size companies like Hess Services, and complements existing Windchill deployments for companies of any size that are seeking to extend their product development system to a broader audience,” said James Heppelmann, executive vice president and chief product officer, PTC. “PTC’s goal is to enable companies of all sizes to leverage their technology investments and successfully execute critical product development initiatives.”

Customer: Lineage Power delivers intelligent power conversion solutions, carrying on the tradition of patented innovation with energy-efficient AC/DC and DC/DC embedded power, indoor/outdoor energy systems, and custom power solutions backed by local field expertise in more than 25 locations worldwide.
Business Initiative: Resolve highly fragmented IT footprint. Improve IT consolidation. Plan for MatrixOne migration due to system failing.
Competition: ENOVIA MatrixOne, Teamcenter
Sales Win Details: 704K Order including Windchill 9.1 (PDMLink, ProjectLink, PartsLink Classification and Reuse, Business Report Author, ESI ERP Connector, and Info*Engine).
Realized Value: Windchill will be used for BOM, CAD Data Management, Change/Configuration Managment, Document Management, Supplier/External Collaboration and Global Product Development.
Why did we win? Team conducted demos and workshops. High scores/weighted criteria versus competitors. We offered a detailed implementation plan.

"Our company was using IntraLink 3.2 and needed to upgrade our Engineering Dept software. We looked at PDMLink and IntraLink 9.1 but both options were too heavy on administration and overkill for our size of company. CDT recommended using ProductPoint with Wildfire to match our company size with less administration work for our IT Dept. The combination of ProductPoint and Wildfire has solved our product life cycle needs. Since the implementation, the software has worked great for revisions, versions and allows employees outside of our Engineering Dept to view the latest data. The engineer that CDT sent to help with the implementation was very knowledgeable about the software and very professional. Using CDT and ProductPoint has been a great fit for our company."

Bruce Sheets
IT Manager
Panelite Inc.

"Thanks for your invaluable help in keeping Pro/ENGINEER and other PTC software products available for K-State Engineering students. Your efforts on our behalf made all the difference."

Steve Coulson, Director
College of Engineering Computing Services Kansas State University

“CDT provided a flexible support system that minimized our downtime while maintaining a high production standard when we converted from Wildfire 2.0 to 3.0 and Intralink 3.4 to PDMLink 8.0. About a year later CDT upgraded Cashco to Wildfire 4.0 and PDMLink 9.1. A test bed configuration was created to pre-test the conversion process. Remote access was utilized for data transfer while testing data. CDT also provided an on-site presence to ensure that the final conversion and subsequent startup flowed seamlessly and without disruption for the end user.

CDT has proved they are competent and reliable. Our relationship with CDT will continue because of the customized, value-added services they have provided and continue to provide in a timely and professional manner.”

Maxine Radenberg
CAD System Administrator
Cashco, Inc.

"He knew the material well and was able to answer all my questions."

"Showed me several things that were not included in the book. This was a great help."

"This is the second instructor I have had from Customer Driven Technologies, and again I was impressed.
Great!"

"I wish my company had known about CDT when we took Intro to Pro E and Machining. We would have been up and running much faster. The Instructurs make the difference."

Joe Hill