Arena - a great resource for document control and quality processes
My company uses Arena for document control and for managing quality processes. This includes employee training, change control, NCMR, …
Overview
What is Arena PLM and QMS?
Arena, a PTC business, helps companies to design, produce, and deliver innovative products with a unified cloud-based PLM and QMS platform. Arena understands modern product companies rely on distributed teams and global supply chains to develop products, ensure regulatory compliance…
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What is Arena PLM and QMS?
Arena, a PTC business, helps companies to design, produce, and deliver innovative products with a unified cloud-based PLM and QMS platform. Arena understands modern product companies rely on distributed teams and global supply chains to develop products, ensure regulatory compliance (FDA,…
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- Competitors
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- FAQs
What is Arena PLM and QMS?
Arena, a PTC business, helps companies to design, produce, and deliver innovative products with a unified cloud-based PLM and QMS platform. Arena understands modern product companies rely on distributed teams and global supply chains to develop products, ensure regulatory compliance (FDA, ISO, ITAR, EAR, and environmental compliance), and respond to customer demands.
Arena states that they have more than 1,400 global high-tech electronics and medical device customers. Companies with complex products comprised of electrical, mechanical, and software designs need a single system to collaborate in real-time. Arena enables every participant throughout the entire product lifecycle to work together–increasing visibility and traceability. This helps to accelerate new product development (NPD) and new product introduction (NPI) by streamlining processes, automating review cycles, and reducing errors to increase profitability.
Arena PLM and QMS Features
- Supported: BOM Management
- Supported: Engineering Change Management
- Supported: Supply Chain Collaboration
- Supported: Quality Management
- Supported: Training Management
- Supported: 3D Visualization
Arena PLM and QMS Screenshots
Arena PLM and QMS Videos
Arena’s product-centric quality management system (QMS) software helps medical device manufacturers to deliver safe and compliant products to market faster. By connecting quality management processes to the product record, Arena helps distributed teams improve visibility and t...
Show More Arena PLM addresses modern product development challenges by bringing product information, people, and processes together into a single Cloud system to speed product development and commercialization. Through better visibility and enhanced collaboration, internal product teams...
Show More Arena PLM for AWS GovCloud helps companies that are subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ensure defense-related technologies are controlled, and, if exported, are done so only with proper export licenses.
Siemen's Teamcenter (also sold by SAP), Arena PLM & QMS, and OpenBOM are some of the most preferred product lifecycle management tools by users.
Arena PLM and QMS Integrations
- NetSuite ERP
- SAP Business ByDesign
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud
- Microsoft Dynamics GP
- QAD Adaptive ERP
- Zendesk Suite
- SOLIDWORKS
- Octopart
- Expandable
- SiliconExpert
- Sage 100
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Altium Designer
- 1Factory
- OrCAD
- Acumatica
- Jira Software
- FlowEQ
- Onshape
- Microsoft Dynamics AX, discontinued
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- CADTALK
- Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
- Razorleaf CLOVER
- Siemens EDA Calibre
- Green Data Exchange (GDX)
Arena PLM and QMS Competitors
Arena PLM and QMS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Arena PLM and QMS Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Oracle Fusion Cloud PLM, MasterControl Quality Excellence, and Teamcenter are common alternatives for Arena PLM and QMS.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.5.
The most common users of Arena PLM and QMS are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews
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March 07, 2020
In a changing world
- It is being used across the whole organization.
- The most common problem is that our client gives us access to Arena, but not everyone accesses the same information due to our client policies and system registration date.
- ECO's reviews online
- BOM report comparison between models
- Easy access to files for each PN
- BOM comparison with the same model but different revision
- Access information assigned by profile or copy other user access
March 06, 2020
Using Arena as part of a high demand medical company
In my experience, Arena helps me manage all product documentation, reports, test protocols, design files, etc. This includes an easy to use search tool, as well as revision controls and ECO controls.
- Revision control
- ECO release process
- Project documentation control
- Slight bugs with integration notifications.
- Missing some basic tutorials on using the system for new users.
Arena is used as a BOM management tool and Change management Tool. Used across the entire organization for storing components, BOMs, design documents, templates, and so forth. Good user interface (nice Winter 2020 update), but slow at times.
- Makes component changes easy to manage.
- Keeps good control of BOMs and sourcing information.
- Lack of support for substitute components: No lifecycle tracking, inability to mass add/remove substitutes.
- Slow loading/UI at times.
- Inability to merge suppliers together (occurs often in the industry with mergers, eg TDK and EPCOS).
March 06, 2020
Arena is a good, solid choice
We use Arena as our configuration management system. It is used heavily by Manufacturing and somewhat by Engineering as a reference tool.
- Simple interface.
- Web interface is easily accessible.
- Integrated quality and sourcing info.
- Not a flexible as sometimes needed.
- I would love to be able to redline drawings and BOM in Arena when submitting requests.
- Would like more integration with Solidworks PDM.
March 06, 2020
Project Managers Dream
We use Arena for a project management tracker and collateral image housing. Arena allows people throughout the company to review content that is being added to the collateral and add comments. This allows our manufacturing plants to view the files of the collateral against what is received in the plants from our suppliers. This also allows us a platform to make any changes to our BOMs. Get all the correct people to check the changes.
- Graphic housing
- Graphic approvals
- BOM approval process
- Uploading multiple files at once is not an option.
- It needs a way to reroute small changes without having to get everyone's approval again.
- Allow the revisions to be a little more obvious.
- Remove the ability to delete old revisions.
March 06, 2020
Gets the job done
Across the whole organization. It is used to implement change orders to release hardware, software, and documentation (both QMS and non-QMS). It is used for other quality processes: reworks, non-conformance reports, CAPAs, etc.
- Approval process: straightforward with clear emails.
- Search functionality is not intuitive for new users.
- Certain processes take too many clicks, e.g. specifying items to a change order.
Arena is used to manage engineering changes and archive product-related documents. It is used as a system in the whole company. It addresses issues on the bill of materials management, change management, and documentation management.
- Change Management (ECR/ECO)
- Approvals
- Documentation Management System
- The platform is still not simplified
- Can be more user-friendly
We use it to store all of the information for our parts database. It is used across the whole organization (software/hardware). It really helps keep everything synced and tracked. Whenever I need to look up specific information on a particular version of a PCBA, all the information is kept backed up on Arena.
- BOMS
- Revision History
- File Management
- Being able to multi-task with multiple Arena windows importing BOMs
- Speed of refreshing on search results
- Speed of importing data
March 06, 2020
Arena - The (not so) Little PLM System that Could!
Arena is used across our organization to support multiple business processes. On the engineering side, it is used to control engineering design and approval from the design stage through to production release, and houses the company's device master record (DMR). The company also uses Arena to capture the device history record (DHR) for each unit built in production. All quality and regulatory information and the design history file (DHF) is stored on Arena. All employees also do any required training through Arena since the system stores all of the company's process maps and training material.
Arena helped the company better organize and manage its engineering, quality and regulatory, manufacturing, project, and training processes.
Arena helped the company better organize and manage its engineering, quality and regulatory, manufacturing, project, and training processes.
- Implementation is straightforward and the Arena implementation experts are EXTREMELY helpful, efficient, and knowledgeable
- Arena has recently released a new UI design which is more modern and streamlined than the original design.
- The Quality World was easily manipulated so that the company could use it for manufacturing and tracing router, build records, etc. (a use case we did not originally have for Arena, but ended up working quite well).
- The Requirements World design is a good start, but extracting data into usable reports still needs a little work.
- The integration with Good Data to help with pulling KPIs and metrics is also good, but is not intuitive (in terms of how to use it and set up your own reports).
- The user type breakdown can be a bit limiting. All of the company's users who only have the training option can only access documents available to them on their training plan, meaning they cannot directly access other controlled documents on the system. It would be better if the user types were just two types, full users and read only users (instead of full, approver only, read only, training only etc.).
Working at a company with multiple world wide design and manufacturing locations has made communication simple and accessible to all. It is being used across the whole organization. Engineering uses it to create and manage our BOMs and have a common location for drawings and other files that are then sent to Suppliers.
- As an engineer who uses Arena to create our product items and BOMs, I like the fact that all the drawings and associated files that need to go to the Supplier are all stored in 1 location
- Previously we had multiple systems and storage locations for different types of files and that meant that not everyone knew where to find all the files. Now it's simple to find all the files with a quick search and click of the mouse.
- The workflow for capturing costs and approvals related to ECR implementation could be better. I would like to see a system where we could export a form from the ECR and send to the Supplier. They could fill in any costs related to the change such as tooling costs, cost changes, scrap or rework costs, etc. Then this form could be imported into Arena. Then at the ECR stage the evaluation team could review and approve these costs and the material disposition plan.
March 05, 2020
Amazing Document Control Platform
Arena is used across the whole organization. It is mainly used for document control and revision control. We use it for all official company documents, such as forms, technical specifications, test procedures, schematics, images, drawings, planning documents, proposals, and more. It's really great for keeping track of all of the reference materials and documentation for our products.
- Revision control, as there is a built in process for handling requests.
- Access levels, as each person only has access to what they need to be able to do.
- Categorization and search. Arena's search tool is robust and useful.
- Notifications and automatic communication. Everyone with Arena access gets an mass email for every communication, with no way to turn it off.
- Onboarding training could be a bit more comprehensive.
March 05, 2020
Great for revision control and product history!
Arena is used exclusively by my department and our suppliers. The main reason we use Arena is to share our PCB fabrication files with suppliers but it has also been very helpful in revision control on PCB designs. We have used Arena for 10+ years and it has done a great job of recording the history and timeline of our various products. We have more recently started to also keep track of BOMs in Arena. We also use Arena to control part number creation and inventory.
- Revision Control
- BOM Management
- Part Number Creation
- Mass file upload fails often
- Updating files on products is tedious
- Would be nice to have automatic ECO creation on revision changes
March 05, 2020
This is the Arena you want to play in
We have been using Arena to help our company release three generations of a product. With Arena, we have been able to seamlessly store and improve the design while maintaining excellent historical timing and reasoning for changes made both at the generational level but also, more importantly, within a given generation.
We have used Arena for many departments in our organization, including the Safety, Manufacturing, Engineering, Field Operations, and Technical Publications departments. The ability to use cross-functional groups for approvals ensures that all parties are involved and notified when changes are happening anywhere in the organization. This has helped speed up implementation time as well as aiding in incremental improvements.
We have used Arena for many departments in our organization, including the Safety, Manufacturing, Engineering, Field Operations, and Technical Publications departments. The ability to use cross-functional groups for approvals ensures that all parties are involved and notified when changes are happening anywhere in the organization. This has helped speed up implementation time as well as aiding in incremental improvements.
- Engineering Change Orders are a snap with the working revision feature you can easily simulate changes without seeing the ripples hit the production floor.
- Period of Release is important because it allows everyone in the organization to see when things are limited availability, or in design or out for full production.
- Arena taking care of red lines allows people to quickly review changes without needing to spend much time seeing what changed in a revision.
- I would like to see the supplier fields more easily flushed out at a basic level--things like cost tracking.
- The ability to create custom dashboards versus your role would also be helpful, similar to Oracle NetSuite.
March 05, 2020
Arena Review
Arena is used across the whole organization. It addresses product release and manufacturing stages. It tracks many phases, from product development through product manufacturing.
- easy access to data
- easy upload and download
- advance search is helpful to find our parts
- useful for the whole organization
- It should run with low internet speed.
- It should contain a separate download vault.
- Stage gate application needs to be simplified.
March 05, 2020
Arena Solutions
My organization uses Arena primarily for product life cycle management. All of our parts and bill of materials for our product are managed in Arena. Engineering, operations, and QA are the primary consumers of these functions. In addition, all of our formal documentation is captured in Arena. The entire organization uses Arena for training. Primarily Arena helps manage our complex product by being able to effectively structure items via the bill of materials, specify suppliers, attach files, track history, and manage change. In addition, we use Arena to manage quality processes like NCRs, CAPAs, reworks, and temporary deviations.
- Change management
- Item history
- Scribe (collaborative work space)
- Search functionality
- Transfer templates from training/beta work space to production work space
- Smart change order approval routings
March 04, 2020
Arena: Solid and committed to improvement
PD and Ops teams use Arena to manage BOMs and communicate sourcing/costing of multi-tier supplier items. We use it for version control and approval routings for quality tracking. We also input part qualification requests, actions, and results to implement into change orders for full tracking of why changes are made to products. Our CMs can update implementation data and view the official part spec direct from the source.
- Change request information and final implementation tracking
- All supplier items in one place
- Part history tracking
- Version control
- Changing older part custom specs once released
- Multi-level BOM cost rollups (1-2 layers possible, but not more than that)
- Noting parts that are explicitly disallowed (we don't want to leave them as potential, but it would be nice to track that they were deleted from potential options)
- Loading list tracking of specific build sourcing configurations
March 04, 2020
Arena Review
We use Arena for BOM management, revision control, and document management. We use it across the organization for implementing drawing and document release. Arena is also used to share information such as drawings and part files with suppliers for manufacturing purposes. Arena is used for tractability for our ISO 9001 certification.
- UI has just been updated to be more user-friendly
- Cloud-based platform means you can access it anywhere
- Revision control means you can easily track changes for parts/documents
- Sometimes the revision of parts effected by a change are not auto-incremented.
- When viewing multiple changes, it would be good to have a status bar.
Arena is being used across most of our company--from Engineering to Manufacturing and Purchasing. The biggest issues it does address are that before, we used an FTP server and anyone that had access could immediately modify a document without a review process and items would tend to get misplaced or deleted. (We had a review process in place, but items fell through the cracks.) This solution really gave our documentation a process flow to get correct approvals from the correct people.
- Organization
- Notifications
- Trust in documents to have fewer errors with more thorough vetting by reviewers.
- Sharing with suppliers is awesome.
- Searching for items is always a gamble.
- Changing password too often
- File uploading and document naming can become cumbersome (don't use the CSV upload process)
March 04, 2020
Arena: On track to be the best
Our operations team uses Arena as a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) tool. It is our system where we manage our documents, files, parts, suppliers, quality issues, engineering, and manufacturing changes, etc.
- All PLM attributes under one single roof
- Very nice history tracking
- Suppliers are in continuous sync with us once we provide access to them.
- If there is any quality issue, the items/suppliers/documents can be tagged very easily for good visibility.
- Building dashboards, metrics out of the data in Arena can be improved.
- Few redundant steps in using the tool
March 04, 2020
Arena--Contract manufacturer's perspective
As a contract manufacturer, we have a seat on our customer's Arena account. This provides our company access to their PLM in order to process changes and review their BOMs, DWGs, and files, so we can manage their production needs. Arena is used by various departments at my company, including program management, manufacturing engineering, design engineering, and quality engineering. Arena addresses the regulatory requirements of change control for medical devices.
- I love being able to review a redlined version of a BOM. It allows us to easily digest what has changed on a customer's BOM without having to ask them too many questions.
- Having the thumbnail of associated files next to part numbers makes it easy to navigate and download files.
- I like the email alerts for downloaded files.
- I find the search function a little annoying.
- I wish the search would provide suggested or related results based on your search.
March 04, 2020
Honest Review for the Honest Arena
Arena is being used to track engineering change orders and projects within the engineering department. We can also track customer requests and document revision levels. It's also been nice to be able to attach notes and track the status of everything being worked on.
- Keeps track of project status.
- Keeps track of why things were changed (revision levels).
- Manages all active (and passive) projects.
- It would be nice to have a more active reminder on when things are due.
- Having a way to be notified or shown what all your tasks are on projects that aren't yours.
- Not having to log into it every time the page goes inactive for more than a few minutes.
March 04, 2020
Review of Arena from an engineer user perspective
Being used across the whole organization. As an ERP software to manage file revisions and document things permanently. this information is considered validated and used throughout the company. Things must be in Arena in order to be purchased.
- Allows for changes to be well documented.
- Allows review from multiple departments so everyone is aware of changes.
- Gives suppliers limited access to view information.
- BOM import is tedious if you do not have a CSV file, and CSV files are sometimes annoying to make. Adding in items one by one is painfully slow.
- New item creation is a very slow process. The web browser takes a long time to load.
- Overall the application is not the fastest.
Arena is used mainly by engineering.
- Revision control.
- Bill of materials.
- Eco review and approval.
- Reports are sparse and difficult to create.
March 04, 2020
Arena Review
Our company currently uses Arena for BOM management. Prior to Arena, we were using Excel sheets which quickly got out of hand especially as our product got more complicated and we had more frequent changes early on in the design phase. Arena was able to make sure everyone on the team was on the same page via the online revision control and clear BOM management.
- Part Revision Control - It can manage it in a clear way where multiple users including CM can be notified when there are Change Orders or other changes made.
- Detailed Revision History - It can keep not only part revision history but also for the files/drawings and other attachments with notes as to why those files were changed.
- Ease of sharing info with CM - Your CM can have a supplier access account that allows them to always know what the latest BOM is and the ability to access anytime online
- Free BOM export feature - They have a file exchange platform to allow sharing of BOM online with people who don't have access to Arena.
- Lack of customization for certain areas on the BOM item fields.
- Cost control of part may be a bit cumbersome as some fields are linked with revision number thus require a BOM release or change release for it to get updated.
- Licenses are needed for anyone on the platform which may get expensive for a smaller company as to fully utilize Arena, the more people are on the platform, the more useful it gets.
March 03, 2020
Arena Review
We use Arena as a PLM software where we have the database of all our parts, from customer off-the-shelf parts to design-owned parts. We keep our design/drawings/important information, etc. We also use Arena for internal processes of approval. For purchasing these parts, we transfer the information to another software. However, Arena is our source of truth.
- Arena is good at jumping from one place to the other quickly to retrace information
- Arena is good for processes of approval.
- Arena allows for fast searches
- Arena could include tracking functionality that could be used as a purchasing software.
- Arena could have built-in macros for quick imports.