Founded in 1958, the Aichtal-based Putzmeister group of companies is now one of the world's leading manufacturers of concrete pumps, shotcrete machines, batching plants, truck mixers, mortar machines, conveyor belts and industrial pumps. The machines are used not only in the construction industry but also in mining, tunnel construction and the energy industry. Following its acquisition by the Chinese construction machinery manufacturer Sany in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Putzmeister has returned to growth, achieving sales of approximately 700 million euros in the 2019 financial year with a workforce of just under 3,000 employees.
The group has also grown by acquiring smaller competitors such as the French company PL2M, which manufactures mortar machines. For years, collaboration between the French subsidiary and other subsidiaries in the group was hampered by the different systems being used. The product developers in Floirac, France, worked with the CAD system Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 and managed their CAD data with the PDM system PTC Windchill, while NX and Teamcenter from Siemens Digital Industries Software are used group-wide.
Consolidating the system landscapes
Putzmeister decided to replace the CAD and PLM systems used at the French subsidiary and migrate its data to the group-wide environment with the aim of elimination the cost of maintaining two system environments and making it easier to reuse components. The French subsidiary however wanted to be able to continue using their CAD models and drawings in the new environment. This meant that their Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 CAD data had to be converted to the NX data format, imported into Teamcenter and be correctly linked there to the metadata using appropriate mapping tables. They were classified and assigned a status during import.