NEEDHAM, Mass., and SAN JOSE, Calif., April 7 -- PTC, the product development company, and Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that they are integrating Adobe Acrobat 6.0 into Windchill ProductView(TM), PTC's visualization tool for its product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. This integration makes it easier than ever to allow users throughout an enterprise to collaborate by improving their ability to review and markup vital product design and document information. "Electronic documents are a critical component of the data that describes a product as it moves through its lifecycle," said Bill Berutti, senior vice president, strategy and product marketing at PTC. "Adobe Acrobat integrated into Windchill ProductView enhances our PLM solution and ensures that our customers have robust capabilities to publish, manage and view documents in PDF." "In order to stay competitive, enterprises must continue to shorten their product development cycles, making faster, more accurate and more secure exchange of product information a vital ingredient in today's business world," said Ivan Koon, senior vice president, ePaper Business Unit at Adobe. "PDF can serve as a common file format for all documents stored in a PLM system, and by incorporating Adobe Acrobat into PTC's Windchill ProductView, Adobe and PTC will help promote the efficient exchange of business critical documents throughout the product development process." Windchill ProductView allows users of PTC's PLM solutions to view, mark-up and collaborate with 3D models, 2D engineering drawings and many other forms of digital product data without the need to have the authoring application installed in the users' work environment. Windchill ProductView unlocks digital product data, allowing many parties throughout the extended enterprise to easily understand and review product data by collaborating earlier in the development cycle. Bringing all interested parties together during the product development process allows manufacturers to better meet customer needs while fulfilling strategic business goals.