PTC launches Windchill AI Parts Rationalization: cleaner part data, faster reuse, lower carrying costs
PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) announced a new AI capability inside Windchill: AI Parts Rationalization. It targets three pains product teams fight daily-duplicate parts, slow or inaccurate searches, and inconsistent part data. The goal is simple: improve findability, reduce waste, and speed up engineering work.
Available as a plugin, it slots into current workflows without forcing a major rollout. Think practical automation for parts management, not another system to babysit.
Why this matters for product development
- Duplicate parts drive higher inventory and overhead. They also add noise to BOMs and confuse sourcing.
- Search friction slows design work and encourages engineers to create yet another part.
- Inconsistent attributes break analytics, block reuse, and derail cross-functional decisions.
What the new capability does
- Detects similar parts to prevent duplicates at the source.
- Identifies redundant parts already in your enterprise systems and flags them for consolidation.
- Routes changes through existing workflows to standardize on preferred parts.
- Deploys as a plugin, so teams can adopt new AI features with minimal disruption.
"Getting part data right is foundational for modern product development, but it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as product lines grow, systems multiply, and organizational complexity expands," said John Haller, General Manager of Windchill, PTC. "We designed the AI Parts Rationalization capability to help our customers cut through that complexity, allowing them to spend less time managing duplicate parts and cleaning up data, and more time focused on building better products."
What you can expect
- Higher part reuse rates and cleaner libraries.
- Lower inventory and carrying costs through consolidation.
- Faster engineering cycles with more accurate search and classification.
- Better collaboration across engineering, sourcing, and operations with consistent part data.
What's coming next
- Smart-assisted classification to improve attribute quality.
- Part reuse inside design environments.
- Schema guidance to strengthen data standards.
- Monitoring for duplicates and tools to compare material and cost properties.
This fits into PTC's broader Intelligent Product Lifecycle vision-building a reliable product data foundation in engineering, extending it across the enterprise, and enabling AI-driven improvements. Windchill will work alongside AI in Creo, Codebeamer, ServiceMax, Onshape, and Arena to scale these gains across the product lifecycle.
How to put it to work this quarter
- Baseline your duplicate rate, search time, and reuse rate. Pick one product line to pilot.
- Define a "golden" attribute set and part naming rules; enforce through the plugin and change workflows.
- Stand up a consolidation process with sourcing and quality to retire duplicates and migrate to preferred parts.
- Add reuse checks to design reviews; measure and publish reuse wins every sprint.
- Train engineers and librarians on similarity search and classification best practices.
Learn more about Windchill AI Parts Rationalization on PTC's site: Windchill AI.
If your team is building AI skills for product roles, explore focused training paths: AI courses by job.
About PTC
PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) is a global software company that helps manufacturers and product companies transform how they design, make, and service physical products. Headquartered in Boston, PTC employs over 7,000 people and supports more than 30,000 customers worldwide. Visit ptc.com for more.
PTC, Windchill, Creo, Codebeamer, ServiceMax, Onshape, Arena, and the PTC logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC Inc. and its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
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