Danaher Motion produces some of the world's top brands of motors, drives, and related motion-control products and systems for aerospace and defense, packaging machinery, medical equipment, robotics, and more.

Speed time-to-market for short-run machines. Danaher Motion's goal is to continue exceeding industry growth rates through a combination of share gains, aggressive new product development, international expansion, e-commerce initiatives, and acquisitions. The company typically produces short-run machines inquantities of 5 to 20 machines. With an imperative to deliver products to customers on schedule, Danaher Motion must constantly find new ways to get products to market faster.

In addition, as a global supplier of high performance positioning systems for flat-panel display (FPD), Danaher Motion seeks to double its 20% market share in FPD equipment over the next few years. Also, since the company is increasingly relying on outsourcing partners, it needs more flexibility and adaptability in a product development process that is undergoing constant change and expansion.

Danaher Motion is currently using Pro/ENGINEER for 3D CAD, along with Pro/INTRALINK, because of their extensive breadth of capabilities, especially their ability toeasily handle large assemblies. Recently, Danaher Motion decided to replace 12 seats of SolidWorks CAD software with Pro/ENGINEER in an effort to standardize its CAD operations.

Faster growth, 25% faster product development. By standardizing on Pro/ENGINEER, Danaher Motion enhanced its concurrent engineering environment by providing an infrastructure where it's easy to share information across sites and with partners. The company has been able to trim the product development process by 25% or more, collaborate on projects regardless of physical location, and meet customer needs and expectations by delivering quality products on time, or ahead of schedule.

Sharpening its competitive edge. With its relentless commitment to high quality and on-time delivery, Danaher Motion has long been a leader in the various fields of motion control. The company pioneered the use of air bearings for commercial, high-precision applications. It changed the face of the lift truck industry by developing AC powered solutions, replacing the industry's long reliance on higher maintenance DC motors. And, with flat-panel displays growing both in size and ubiquity, Danaher Motion's systems are now playing a crucial role in OEM inspection and repair processes for flat-panel manufacturing.

"Time-to-market is key for our business, across all of our divisions," says John Bettencourt, a senior mechanical design engineer at Danaher Motion. "I can tell you, from many years of experience, that you almost never have a customer buy something right out of the catalog. What Pro/ENGINEER allows us to do is take our core technologies-which we consider standard jumping-off points for customization-and modify them quickly in order to meet our customer-specific needs. Pro/ENGINEER makes that possible. I can't imagine doing it in another mechanical design program."

Taking advantage of growing markets. Flat-panel displays and their ancillary products for manufacturing and inspection is a huge growth market that will become even larger as applications flourish and prices drop. Competition will be keen in this global industry, which is attracting a variety of capable competitors from the U.S., Europe and Asia. "One of the things that will prepare us to serve that market as it explodesis the PTC suite of products," Bettencourt says. "We can become more efficient, multiplying our productivity as we increase staffing."

Danaher Motion envisions even greater success in the future with Windchill ProjectLink, PTC's product development collaboration tool. Windchill ProjectLink enables internal product stakeholders to collaborate across the enterprise, as well as with global suppliers and customers over the Web. Windchill ProjectLink provides a virtual workspace, where development teams have controlled access to up-to-date product development data. The software enables everyone involved in a project to instantly see schedules, deliverables, and delivery dates, so that projects are completed on time and on target.

"Windchill ProjectLink will allow us to work with vendors to get parts faster, because we can collaborate with them over the Internet," Bettencourt says. "The ability to share virtual prototypes with customers will also help with our marketing efforts."

Maximizing aftermarket support. Danaher Motion prides itself on aftermarket support and customer responsiveness, and today, with Pro/INTRALINK, Danaher Motion has a comprehensive tool for managing massive volumes of 3D CAD data. In the future, with Windchill PDMLink, the company will achieve a single data repository for managing all forms of product data.

"Without a product data management tool like today's solution of Pro/INTRALINK, or tomorrow's anticipated solution of Windchill PDMLink, there is no way we would be able to control our data and service our customers' needs," Bettencourt says.

Danaher Motion has a variety of customers in Korea and Japan, and with the reporting and data tools in PTC's PDM solutions, the company can respond quickly to a dynamic market.

"Their industry needs could change in the middle of a run, requiring us to swiftly design retrofits and repair kits to address their needs," Bettencourt says. "PTC's data management solutions let us create a retrofit on the fly, without having to muddle up an original design."

Danaher Motion produces some of the world's top brands of motors, drives, and related motion control products and systems. Its divisions include Dover Instrument, Kollmorgen, Pacific Scientific, Portescap and Thomson, serving industries as diverse as semiconductors, aerospace and defense, mobile off-highway (e.g., golf carts), packaging machinery, medical equipment, and robotics.