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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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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February 23, 2024
Arena - a great resource for document control and quality processes
- Arena does a great job with creating a Bill of Materials and makes it really easy to access that information. It can be presented in many different ways to highlight critical information.
- Arena makes it easy for users to see outstanding action items and to see the progress of a change order or quality process.
- Arena provides a good user interface for training.
- Arena lacks the capability to edit documents within its interface and requires users to upload new versions of documents when changes are made. This makes it a bit more challenging to collect and implement reviewer feedback
- Arena's requirement tracking world does not have the proper functionality we need and was not useful for us.
February 20, 2024
Low cost solution but still room for improvents
- Import files makes it easier to create/update several BOM changes across many part numbers.
- Easy to search to find ECOs and documents stored in the system.
- Unable to edit/update BOM on previous revisions of part number.
- The sourcing and supplier access is confusing. Difficult for companies that are approved suppliers to see part number.
September 29, 2023
Arena PLM and QMS Review
- Document control
- CAPA
- PLM
- Initial implementation help
September 20, 2023
My Experience with Arena PLM
- Revision Control
- Bill of materials
- Item number creation and categorization
- Software revision management
- CAD file management
- Improvements to make Projects easier to navigate, change, etc.
September 09, 2023
Review of Arena PLM and QMS.
- Linking files that are saved in other software.
- Providing audit trails and document lifecycle information.
- Allows cross-fictional teams to work collaboratively.
- Searching, needing to use keywords and shortcuts to find relevant information.
September 02, 2023
Arena PLM and QMS Superior Document Control
- Change Management
- User Friendly
- Easy to use
- Update process should be more integrated
- Terminated employees remained access
- Privileges of each user should be known
August 28, 2023
Driving a project with Arena
- Change control
- Revision management
- Quality Processes
- Requirements Management
- Task management
- Training Management
- Notifications management
August 25, 2023
Arena PLM and QMS use for document control
- upload of materials
- Safekeeping history of submissions
- capturing inventory dispositions
- capturing projects
- sections in the changes that I mark N/A, I'd like to see those sections pre-marked based on tracking my prior markings in that section - for a quicker submission
August 25, 2023
Great system for a medium sized company!
- Connecting items across BOMs and assemblies
- Sorting items by categories and attributes
- The ability to have different types of requests and change orders based on the needs of the company
- Being able to create design revisions for items already pushed to production, instead of having to create a new item
- Hiding abandoned, obsolete, retired items when adding items to BOMs and assemblies
- Unique revision systems based on item category
- Ability to create custom Quality Processes
- Ability to create custom reports
- Powerful Analytics (with the Analytics module)
- Maintenance of the Device History Record (DHR)
- Maintenance of the Approved Supplier List (ASL)
- Facilitation of Training Programs
- In my opinion, the Help Pages clearly do not realize that a picture is worth a 1,000 words; need illustrations and screenshots!
- I think the 'Save' button when editing Quality Processes needs to "float" on the active page, not lurking at the bottom.
- In my experience, the Arena PLM and QMS Training programs need to be revamped to include "real-world" examples and working through examples, not simply reading through a training manual.
August 23, 2023
Arena PLM and QMS in a medical device company
- BoM control
- Linking quality events
- Customization of QMS for the organization's need.
- The search function: makes it difficult to search for items and documents without getting the codes exactly correct. A suggested search feature would be beneficial.
- The BOM export function could be refined to allow users to specify which file type they specifically want exported (eg. PDFs, Word, STEP)
- Further traceability for lot numbers/ serial numbers in the quality world.
August 17, 2023
Arena - More than a supplier-customer relationship!
- Having partners and suppliers be part of ECOs throughout their lifecycle
- Sharing procedures and documents in real-time anywhere at any time
- Provide a secure area for our documents and designs
- Ease of use and support
- Some mass edit features could be added, such as changing suppliers in sourcing for all affected parts when a semiconductor company acquires another company but keeps the same part numbers...currently parts need to be changed individually.
August 17, 2023
Arena PLM and QMS is a purpose-built solution - just make sure you have a purpose before purchase!
- Revision Control
- Advanced Searching
- User Access management
- Item deprecation is an issue for us (calibrated items coming up for calibration, SOPs up for review)
- Because it is a web-based system, it is prone to the usual web-based bugs. Hitting the "back" key in the browser instead of the on-screen back button usually locks up the form and requires you to back all the way out and start over.
- Initial setup. Because our initial setup was so customizable, and done by employees who are no longer with the company/had differing views of what they wanted from the system, we were left with quite a mess to clean up. Not sure how I would go back in time to fix this besides make sure there were less voices in the room, and more out-of-the-box solution selections.
March 24, 2023
Arena is easy to use.
- The change management process is easy to use.
- The use of multiple workspaces allow versatility across different departments.
- I am not sure if it is the way we are using Arena, but I find myself going in circles at points.
March 22, 2023
Arena PLM & QMS - Stellar Product
- Extremely easy to configure, not cumbersome or overpowering, big plus with todays technology, meets your individual companies needs
- Onboarding Suppliers and CMs extremely effective ensuring our communication strategy is on track
- Cloud based, portable, access from anywhere, with no constraints
- Communicates in easy to understand nomenclature, straight forward, concise and clear
- Users can easily access information basically at their fingertips, without deep dives to try to find what they need. Tying reference items to each other ensures all the needed documentation is in one place.
- Would be nice to be able to add graphics and images on the change order specification page, for better clarify
- Implementation of a change after it is effective is lacking visibility, and has to be managed manually
- QMS could be a bit more streamlined, so there are not so many steps
- When an upgrade is done, it can change areas where you were not expecting to be changed and it may not be something I wanted changed
- When configuring an advanced supplier to an item, if that supplier is already configured, they should not show up as a new selection
- Duplicating an item, where the same supplier is used has an error when it is selected, few too many steps are added to get the results needed
- When adding users or suppliers to a change, their whole account information takes up a good majority of the screen, this is not needed, only the user name should be visible for easy access
- Approvers or comments only personnel used to be very easy to add, employees and suppliers are now separated, more steps involved, when it used to be simple and consice
- Customizable attributes and multiple views/templates for things lets users with different focuses or work-flows tune their experience to best fit.
- Redlining- showing changes in different views of an item between different revisions (not just consecutive revisions) is really helpful.
- Saving advanced search filters as shortcuts on the dashboard is also really helpful- I just discovered this!
- Flexibility in what files suppliers are allowed to see within an item
- Trouble with exporting BOMs with component substitutions included.
- I wish there was a view that lets you see all of the higher-assemblies an item is part of.
March 17, 2023
Robust system not used to fullest potential
- Navigation is logical
- Can incorporate and expand on linking different parts of the organization
- Phase gate system automatically prevents improper approval or purchasing of parts
- System modifications take a long time to implement
- Users cannot pullback their own change order submissions without admin support
- Navigation tabs in change orders make it difficult to access important information without advanced knowledge of the system. Need to be able to put important information in obvious and easy to reach locations.
March 14, 2023
Happy to have Arena in our work life!
- Tracks our review and approvals
- Tracks our change requests and orders, and history of change
- Holistic view of the item record, and links it dynamically to other pieces of data
- I would love the Quality world to have a Quality World only, admin.
- I find Analytics hard to use and not well supported, had some help trying to build out a Dashboard, but eventually gave up and moved to another tool. Would love it to be enhanced for the user in future releases to make it friendlier of a tool.
- I have some ideas on enhancing Supplier content, would love to discuss, but includes for example the ability to have Suppliers get notification and participate in change order without seeing each other.
March 14, 2023
Great Combination of a QMS and PLM solution-in-one
- trainings
- e-signature
- tutorials
- management of requirements
- less clicks in the UX
- allow more imports of files
August 31, 2022
Browser-based login-anywhere PLM very handy, but UI is tedious time-consuming & cumbersome for frequent users
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- It provides easy, 'login-anywhere' internet cloud-based access to fundamental PLM functions.
- It provides secure access control for employees & vendors (but you pay per person for access licenses).
- Data is effectively 'always backed up' in the internet-cloud.
- There is an option to attach thumbnail graphics representative of each item and create a Bill of Materials view that also displays the graphics to help provide item recognition for BOM readers.
- The Arena PLM and QMS user interface is very high on time-motion cost - lots of long mouse-moves and extra clicking required to navigate & do common data searching, entry, and editing tasks; it's not as well thought-through for reducing the common tediousness as it could be (make the UX design manager have to sit down and create 50 full & _complete_ new Item records and by the 4rth one, they should be pretty familiar with at least a couple things that could be improved).
- When selecting an image for an Item record, the user should be able to paste image data directly from the local operating system clipboard instead of requiring the user to go through the tedious process of saving the image as a file and then uploading the file -- seriously, pasting image data directly into a browser-based dialog has been state-of-the-art web design for about ten years now...Arena PLM and QMS is behind.
- Use of window display space is frustratingly inefficient - lots of wasted display area that prevents users from seeing as much useful information as they could with better allocation of display space. Arena PLM and QMS even went thru a period prior to the sale to PTC, where they spent A LOT of money 'improving the look' but in fact resulted in displaying about 4 LESS BOM line items in the same screen space! (an Arena PLM and QMS sales exec didn't believe my claim about the new display becoming even _less_ efficient in terms of space utilization until I showed him a before & after side-by-side screen clip comparison).
- When a file type is set to .PDF, provide a global workspace option to ALWAYS apply the correct .PDF identifying MIME type when downloading the file, _regardless_ of what MIME type was used during upload. This is a very frustrating issue due to code bases not being updated when the The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) finally defined an official MIME type for .PDF some years ago. I understand there are a couple arguments for maintaining whatever legacy assignment was used by the original file uploader, but in the overwhelming majority of cases, more current web browsers & plug-ins function more smoothly when the current official MIME type is used for .PDF files. Just make a global option to always use it.
- Arena PLM and QMS tabs left open on Chrome browser (up to date) over time tend to consume _LOTS_ of system memory resources, and even when a foreground Arena PLM and QMS tab is idle, just displaying a BOM for example, the CPU resources consumed fluctuate between 15-50% !?! That is ridiculous! Even _actively_ filling out this survey form is consuming well under 10%. Arena PLM and QMS likes to say they are compatible with Chrome, but don't recommend it - though Chrome is the most popular browser in the _world_.
- Some information data fields in some views, no longer properly text-wraps to display the whole field data entry - not even in full screen maximized 100% view - since the Winder 2019 Arena PLM and QMS update (2.5yrs, still not fixed).
- The Arena PLM and QMS UI can not be quickly navigated with the keyboard & shortcut keys - frequent & significant mouse interaction is required; that's _really_ inefficient UI design from a time-motion perspective for a data entry application. ...and that's one of the big factors that too many decision-making managers overlook when deciding on a PLM/MRP/ERP/QMS application - that is their labor burden costs of employees having to use the tool -- because inefficient application user interfaces cost A LOT of time over a year....decision-makers should as for a good metric to be able to gauge whether efficiency improvements are being made year after year in exchange for their increasing subscription costs.
- It sure seems like there is _A_LOT_ of relatively 'low hanging fruit' easy improvements that can be made to the Area UI which would significantly improve daily user's satisfaction with the product. ...but over the years, it has not felt like Arena PLM and QMS was very interested in addressing issues, fixing bugs, and improving the UI once customers became locked in with a $$$$subscription. :-/
- There are more issues I could add and I've compiled a list of relatively simple improvements which I've validated with other colleagues using Arena PLM and QMS in other, larger companies; so, I know most many would benefit and that it's not a list of niche complaints specific to our usage. I have shared the list with Arena PLM and QMS folks a few times over the years, but I suspect it comes down to the budget argument 'prove that these improvements will sell more subscriptions.' Well, I can say for sure that because we have seen so little improvement over the years, I an colleagues advise other companies to make a careful evaluation of all your options before deciding on Arena PLM and QMS.
July 07, 2022
Smart software for a smarter workforce.
- BOMs for product assemblies
- Revision structure
- Smartsheets
- Updates required in Smartsheets.
- Compatibility with CAD.
- Suggestions to reduce part count and repeats.
July 07, 2022
Arena Review
- BOM management
- Where used tracking
- Alternate product variants
- Tracking of SKUs across packaging
- Drop and drag building of BOMs
- Back to previous search
- History tracking
- Training and implementation could be more efficient. Examples of best practices could be shared and then cloned.
July 06, 2022
Arena for Quality System Management
- Bill of material.
- Quality module - CAPA Workflow.
- Quality module - Risk Management File/Design History File/Device Master Record.
- The reporting interface is fairly weak. We export to Excel to organize and sort the data.
- Linkage could be improved. I'd like to ability to link to closed workflows within the Quality Module.
- The search results consistently contains relevant and closely-associated documents.
- The training plans instantly alert me via email when a document was revised.
- It's very user friendly.
- The ability to easily view old revisions of documents would be nice. I still can't figure out how to do this.
April 29, 2022
Well worth it!
- An intuitive UI
- Fast, basic operation
- Easy search functions
- "Where used" feature
- ECO creation is a bit complicated