Looking to accelerate and gain better visibility into product development activities, Quanta Computer deployed PTC Windchill software running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise database management software. Now, the company can monitor sales, engineering design, and production processes in a single system and can scale its business intelligence efforts to build its competitive edge.

Business Needs
Quanta Computer is one of the world’s largest makers of portable personal computers. From its founding in 1988, the company also has thrived as an original equipment manufacturer of hardware components for such industry giants as Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard.

Over the past decade, Quanta has experienced remarkable growth, increasing its manufacturing output from 810,000 PCs shipped in the late 1990s to its current yearly total of more than 36 million PCs shipped. Behind the growth in demand for its products, which also include mobile phones and liquid crystal display televisions, is the company’s tireless commitment to innovation and its ongoing efforts to deliver high-quality consumer electronic devices at the lowest possible price.

To more effectively harness the output from its research and development department, executives began looking for a new system to centrally manage all elements of its product lifecycle. Quanta wanted to replace its former Agile production management application, which ran on an Oracle database. Executives searched for a new system to centrally manage all elements of its product lifecycle—from development to market release and sales data tracking. Functional limitations in both the software and database architecture of this system hampered efficient cross-team collaboration. For example, engineers could not easily share 3-D product drawings stored in the company’s PTC Pro/ENGINEER computer-aided design system with sales staff and product managers.

The company also wanted to increase flexibility and integration with its enterprise architecture. To reduce time-to-market for the company’s products, executives wanted to give employees across various departments and business units the ability to view and share information more easily and from more locations. Moreover, Quanta wanted to provide employees with self-service tools for accessing and using business intelligence data.

Solution
Quanta chose to deploy PTC Windchill product lifecycle management (PLM) software, which replaced its Agile production management application. The company opted to base the Windchill application on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise database management software.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was the clear choice for optimizing our deployment of PTC Windchill because it combines fast data processing with flexible, easy-to-use tools for expanding business intelligence. Tien-Chi Fang Vice President, Management Information Center, Quanta Computer

“We chose to standardize our PCs on the Windows operating system more than a decade ago, which proved to be the right choice,” says Tien-Chi Fang, Vice President of the Management Information Center at Quanta Computer. “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was the clear choice for optimizing our deployment of Windchill PLM because it combines fast data processing with flexible, easy-to-use tools for expanding business intelligence.”

“Microsoft technology has been an integral part of Quanta’s innovation strategy for over two decades,” says Fang.

In addition to basing its installation of PTC Windchill PLM on Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the company is evaluating deploying PTC Windchill SocialLink. This solution incorporates social computing functionality from Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and product and portfolio management features from Microsoft Project Server 2010. The company plans to deploy Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to make it easier for employees to access enterprise data.

By linking PTC Windchill PLM and Windchill SocialLink through the use of a shared database platform, the company hopes to maximize opportunities for collaborative problem-solving while gaining clearer visibility into its end-to-end production process. “The partnership is exciting to us, because it joins the world-class personal productivity and social computing capabilities of Microsoft solutions with the comprehensive product lifecycle management capabilities of Windchill,” says Fang.

Benefits
By basing Windchill PLM on Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Quanta Computer has improved the performance and stability of this application in its environment, while easing interoperability with other infrastructure components, including its planned implementation of PTC Windchill SocialLink. “With an integrated solution running on Microsoft SQL Server, we’re able to achieve proactive, end-to-end product lifecycle management,” says Fang. “Now we can gain a holistic view into the product development process and we have one single source of knowledge about our entire product portfolio.”

Boosts Business Intelligence
By standardizing on Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Quanta can help ensure rapid, consistent data analysis and reporting across systems, enabling a centralized, highly efficient approach to data management. Through the use of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the company also improves its capacity for providing self-service business intelligence tools to more employees throughout the organization. Together with its planned deployment of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the company hopes to broaden access to enterprise data to facilitate improved teamwork and faster, better-informed decision making.

Speeds Response to Market Demand
The company’s use of enhanced tools for product lifecycle management, coupled with its improved ability to filter and analyze sales and customer data, gives Quanta greater agility in responding to fluctuating demand for its products. “By consolidating on a single system for product lifecycle management and using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to process and drill down into data more efficiently, we have better visibility into what our customers want and can respond to their needs more quickly,” says Fang.

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