PTC announced that JCPenney, one of the nation's largest department store retailers, has selected the

PTC Retail, Footwear and Apparel solution, FlexPLM?. The PTC solution will provide JCPenney with a scalable solution to manage and control its product specification, improve collaboration among its global design partners and reduce overall design and manufacturing cycle times.

As a North American-based company with suppliers and offices located around the globe, JCPenneywas looking for a PLM solution to meet its robust demands for global access to product specificationinformation. JCPenney selected PTC FlexPLM because it offered the scalability to manage the globalproduct data of the retail giant.

FlexPLM enables organizations like JCPenney to scale product development across multiple teams located in numerous geographical locations worldwide. FlexPLM delivers an intuitive set of automated tools in a unified user environment to streamline communication, track milestones, pre-empt performance bottlenecks and provide instant visibility of product development steps.

"JCPenney selected PTC to manage and streamline our process for our home office associates, our vendors and International Buying Offices because it delivers a best-in-class technology with a proven track record of PLM success in the retail, footwear and apparel market,” Jennifer Pritchard, director of cycle time reduction for JCPenney.

FlexPLM leverages the power and scalability of Windchill?, PTC’s content and process management solution, to enhance the product development process by providing a single source of visibility to key product information throughout the entire process from concept development to quality assurance.

FlexPLM is the only enterprise PLM solution that is web-based, fully configurable, scalable and able to manage complex workflow processes of a trend-based retail, footwear and apparel industry. The PTC solution enables global organizations to manage the interdependent relationships among product designers, material suppliers, testing service providers and other third party vendors in order to facilitate communication among the groups.

"Globalization, fast fashion and the need to reduce time between design concept and delivery to consumer are three drivers leading players in the retail, footwear and apparel industry to implement

PLM solutions," said Kathleen Mitford, vice president, vertical market strategy, PTC. "PTC solutions enable leading national and international brand retailers to carve out competitive advantage by refining

PLM processes in order to drive top line revenue, increase operational efficiency and improve supply chain collaboration.”