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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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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August 17, 2023
Arena - More than a supplier-customer relationship!
Arena is used throughout the company and by most departments and all our divisions, here and abroad. It is also used by our assembly partners for parts selection and supply chain planning. Being a cloud-based solution, Arena permits many gains in time and timeliness of communications while keeping everything available to everyone at anytime anywhere. By communicating designs in real-time, Arena permits us to not only save time but reduce errors and roll out better designs faster. Time to market is key, and Arena has helped us with this. Really appreciate all the help so far, keep up the great work!
- 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.
- It has reduced our New Product Introduction time by releasing BOMs, parts, and documents faster and more efficiently to all our suppliers and partners simultaneously.
- Time to market has been faster and more efficient also; processes and procedures are clear and easy to follow.
Arena support and help have been tremendous since our partnership began. Doug J. and Joshua R. have been key players with supporting Trilliant and adding value to Arena by providing innovative solutions, tips, and shortcuts and adding tools to improve our efficiency and our ability to harness some of the power that Arena has. This allows us to tap into Arena's powerful features that would otherwise be unknown or would have taken a lot more time to find. They have given us the trust and confidence to reach out and to continue to use Arena more and roll it out through more users at a faster pace and with a better payback to us. It has been and continues to be a WIN-WIN relationship. Many thanks to all Arena support personnel for all their continued help and assistance.
Arena's implementation was done fast and seamlessly. We had assistance throughout all phases and the implementation was with us at all steps of the exercise. The implementation was done on time and roll out through facilities was done effortlessly. As always, Arena provides great valuer for the money,
I was not involved with SAP when it was evaluated but feedback from others SAP was chosen without full knowledge of ARENA's capabilities in these areas.
Yes Arena does a good job in covering these areas. all of these are covered but we mainly use the RoHS, REACH and ISO features which are easy to use and make our re-certifications easier and faster with registrars.
Arena being Cloud based made the transition painless and seemless for us. We could communicate in real time with out supply base and teams 24/7 which was highlighted even more with the pandemic.
Users have more than doubled in the 12 years we have implemented ARENA. We integrated Silicon Expert as an add on to help with parts lifecycle and procurement. Partners and preferred supplier trippled in this time and their integration was also quite fast and seemless. All of these expansion/transition have become more and more efficient and quite easy to do.
Quality, speed, ease of access, security and good communication are not options; with ARENA you get it all at a high degree.
Always positive and customer oriented, always on point.
75
Supply Chain, certification, Firmware Engineering, Software Engineering, Quality support, Hardware Engineering, Electrical engineering.
5
Technicians, engineering managers and engineers
- Different suppliers and partners access
- Integration of merger and acquisition entities database into Arena
- Fast and easy roll out of licenses at overseas locations
- Recognition of Arena when applying for ISO certification/renewal
- Use of Arena in conjunction with other software/tools such as SolidWorks, Silicon Expert, etc.
Introducing new product lines/new business unit integrations. We have had 3 major product integrations in the past 5 years, all of which were different in their challenges and from where we started. Arena was able to analyze our different needs and propose alternate solutions adapted to our needs. Most of these have increase the speed in which we were able to input parts/documents/BOM's and data from different systems and software. In some cases, we even had special tools developed on the fly especially for us which were life savers for us, one experience come to mind when Doug Johnston from Arena, developped a quick dBase tool that permitted us to load new parts and BOM's quickly and efficiently from an Archaic Excel format!
May not be advanced bu the redline and compare features are very useful when customers ask for differences from different revisions or to make sure ECR and ECO's have been properly implemented and that nothing was missed.
Use and experiment with the advanced Arena filters. These offer a myriad search options using logical operations. One can literally find anything in Arena with 2, 3, or 4 filters...we have in the upwards of 30K different parts and BOM's in ARENA and we use these several time a day to quickly find (in less than 30 seconds) any component, part, document....etc that is part of our ARENA huge database.
Yes
We were using back in 2007 Lotus and Excel to do most of our PLM...needless to say that ARENA was a MAJOR upgrade for us!
I would probably recommend to my management to skip a few of the other PLM providers we evaluated and narrow it to 2 or 3, including ARENA in the selection process!
- Implemented in-house
Yes
Trial, test and production.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
None that I remember, everything was done smoothly and effortlessly.
- Training
- Getting used to the environment.
- Online Training
I think ARENA PLM is already at the best practices level IMO!
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface
To get reports and applications we did not have and it was easy to do with the expert help from ARENA!
No - we have not done any custom code
None that comes to mind.
Yes
In some cases where time to market is of essence, if we do not have a direct path to the solution we will ask ARENA support team...in 90% of these cases, our ARENA support team or Joshua Robbins, Doug Johnston and Lori Austin have chipped in and given us the solution free of charge. In some more technical and time sensitive issues, we have required and payed for premium services and every time we did, Trilliant got their moneys worth and more. Arena support team are extremely knowledgeable, efficient and will go the extra mile to satisfy us. Time and money wisely invested...my two cents!
Yes
Only once that I can remember and it was due to an internet provider issue...it was quickly resolved.
Several times but once that occurred late last year. We needed to have parts that were OBSOLETED but that appeared ONLY in OBSOLETED and Abandoned BOM's. We worked with Doug Johnston who assisted us in outputting a huge data file which with his assistance, could filter out non needed parts and get to OBSOLETE parts THAT were ONLY contained in OBSOLETED parts. The process was even automated to get it downloaded in our ARENA dashboard automatically once a month. By doing this, we were able to effectively and quickly remove obsoleted parts from our inventory and from our partners inventory.
- Searches with Advance fucntion
- BOM Compare
- Redline feature
- Searching for ECO title in an ECO list opened in a screen...ECO title width limited and truncates part of the title
November 22, 2019
ARENA SOLUTIONS - Product Lifecycle Management
Arena is our organization wide PLM solution. It allows us to manage product data with ease.
- Great tool for engineering change management.
- Insures security/integrity of all product data.
- Excellent implementation of revision control for product data.
- % progress bars for approval of an ECO.
- I don't know the numbers for ROI. However the qualitative benefit is clear to me. Arena is a critical tool for new product development (NPD) and introduction (NPI).
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
Arena has the feature set that we require. Product usability is outstanding.
Initial implementation was completed prior to me joining the company. All indications are that it was easy to deploy.
I used Matrix10 about 11+ years ago. I believe Arena to be a superior product.
50
Engineering
Manufacturing
Purchasing
Service & Support
3
Arena Administrator.
Arena Expert users in Engineering & Manufacturing.
- Generation of Bills of Materials.
- Storage of Controlled Drawing & Documents.
- Engineering Change Management of products.
- Generation of Spares lists as a phantom BOM (Qty of items set to 0).. Elimination of requirement for Spreadsheets
- Use of holding parts numbers (item numbers) as references for sales opportunities.
- Arena integration with Solidworks
- Arena integration with Oracle
November 20, 2019
Vincent - fitbit - Arena Review
Arena is currently deployed across the entire organization for the purpose managing Fitbit's product data.
The product data it allows us to vault and change control are the following:
The product data it allows us to vault and change control are the following:
- Part Numbers/Items
- Item Attributes
- Suppliers / Supplier Items
- Item BOM
- Item Revs
- Item Lifecycles
- Change Orders / Deviations
- Change Requests
- It provides a solid PLM tool that is ready and easy to use, without much upfront cost and deployment effort.
- It provides ready to use licenses for outsourced Suppliers to navigate product data Fitbit has granted access to.
- Allows Administrators to quickly deploy new Item & Change types as well as implement new attributes, across the organization.
- Allows users to not only see the files associated with the item, but also any files attached to the supplier item being referenced
- More change control should be implemented to Supplier Items, like lifecycles and change controlled attributes at the supplier item level
- Better traceability and audit trails on any and all objects in Arena that can be easily seen through a history tab
- Better control on user defaulted settings, managed by the administrator.
- I was not around during the ROI analysis, however, I can say for certain that Fitbit has benefited greatly from having deployed Arena during its time of tremendous growth.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Third-party Reviews
Again, Arena looks to have been deployed back in 2011, while I've only been here since October of 2017. The answers above are purely speculative.
I wouldn't be able to say.
We were exploring upgrading to Oracle Agile PLM, but our plan was quickly shut down due to budget constraints.
1500
Marketing, Engineering, Sales, Operations, Supply Chain, Manufacturing Engineering, Trade Control Compliance, Quality Control, Procurement
3
- Cross-collaboration and communication skills to effectively enforce Arena standards and rules.
- Leadership ability to implement configuration and business processes
- Minimal technical skills in making configuration updates.
- Leadership ability to implement configuration and business processes
- Minimal technical skills in making configuration updates.
- BOM Changes
- Revision Changes
- Communicate Changes to Global Suppliers
- Single Source of Truth for other data objects (not part numbers)
- Sourcing Changes Workflows
- Hiding certain attachments from Suppliers
- Quality Tool
- Training tracking tool
- Ticket tracking tool
Arena has provided our organization with a robust and easy to use PLM solution. It provides system administrators tools for quick configuration updates with low overhead. I have however, learned that Arena's simplicity also hinders its scaling capabilities and needs a major revamping of its architecture to provide modern integration capabilities with other systems. I will say this though, seems like the company has been redefining their product roadmap, and consequently have been putting great effort in making small but impactful changes to the product on regular scheduled updates.
Our organization required that our SKU part numbers only be transferred from our Arena PLM to SAP ERP, when the following criteria was true:
- SKU was in Rev A (In Production)
- SKU Category = netsuite
To accomplish this, our team leveraged the Arena APIs and obtained scheduled reports out of Arena when new SKU items met the criteria.
- SKU was in Rev A (In Production)
- SKU Category = netsuite
To accomplish this, our team leveraged the Arena APIs and obtained scheduled reports out of Arena when new SKU items met the criteria.
- The Change (ECO) redlining feature to see what spec, BOM, or Sourcing updates were made on an ECO, then being able to cycle through them is an awesome time saving feature.
- Being able to see manufacturing pn attachments, below the actual item attachments is also a blessing I haven't seen in other PLM tools.
No
Not much change needed. Our evaluation and selection process is pretty standardized and meticulous.
November 19, 2019
Short and simple.
Across the whole organization. Engineering uses it for doc control purposes. The official release drawings go to production for fabrication. Official release BOMs authorize the purchase of components.
We also use it extensively as part of our ISO certification, as it allows us to track out entire device history record. This includes customer communications, meeting notes, project schedule, and everything possibly relevant to the project. Having all of that on an online server is invaluable when working remotely.
We also use it extensively as part of our ISO certification, as it allows us to track out entire device history record. This includes customer communications, meeting notes, project schedule, and everything possibly relevant to the project. Having all of that on an online server is invaluable when working remotely.
- Controls documents in a revision-based system.
- Easy to ECO.
- Approvals are documented and dated.
- Better search functionality. Searching partials sometimes doesn't work too well.
- Ability to set all revisions to "unchanged" when doing an ECO, instead of having to manually set each one
- Quality has definitely increased, since process controls are more closely followed. There is no way for production / vendors to access incorrect test forms or drawings.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
Ease of use and customization for our organization's needs.
Simple to deploy. We are satisfied. The training was simple and concise.
Arena had modules that made more sense with our objectives with a PLM. The cost structure was much better than Agile.
30
Our engineers use Arena for overall document control. It is the base for drawing, CAD, specification, and revision control. It also houses all designed control documentation in the Projects module.
Our purchasing department use Arena to reference datasheets, quotes, and costing information.
Our production and vendors use Arena to find the latest revisions of drawings, models, and test sheets.
Our purchasing department use Arena to reference datasheets, quotes, and costing information.
Our production and vendors use Arena to find the latest revisions of drawings, models, and test sheets.
1
Arena support needs to have a comprehensive knowledge of all modules and how they work. Even the less used features such as BOM upload may eventually be required, and the support staff either needs working knowledge, or enough accumen to get answers quickly.
- Revision control. It's invaluable for tracking revision changes, as well as approval dates.
- Drawing and CAD access. Allows production to only access the most recent revisions of an item, thus eliminating possibility of manufacturing incorrect versions.
- Comprehensive storage of device history records in the Projects module.
- We did not expect to make such extensive use of the Scribe function. It's a streamlined way to communicate any issues during the ECO approval process.
- When future budget permits, we'd love to use Solidworks integration for more comprehensive control of models.
We've successfully used Arena to achieve compliance with our medical customers' requirements for device history records. Arena allows us to store the entire revision history of an assembly, as well as related requirements, test documents, procedures, meeting notes, and customer communications via the Project module. This is also invaluable, as it satisfies numerous requirements for ISO 9001 certification.
The Scribe note has been quite useful during ECO review. It allows managers to give feedback on ECOs that require changes or clarifications within Arena, while also automatically generating links to the relevant pages and reminder emails. It's streamlined the entire process.
Remember that you can always use the "back" button in Arena to go back to the previous item. It's extremely useful when dealing with multiple nested sub-assemblies.
No
We underestimated how useful the Projects module would be. If we had to evaluate again, we'd likely prioritize device history systems like Projects.
No
N/A
- ECO approvals
- Revision history control
- Costing
- When generating an ECO, all revisions are automatically set to the next revision. If an ECO is merely a correction without revision roll, there's no way to set all of them to "unchanged". You can only set as a specific number/letter. This is cumbersome when an ECO involves 200+ parts at different revisions.
September 20, 2019
Arena experience at EDI
Arena is used across entire organization at EDI. It is used for PN generation, storing design files, sourcing specification, building product BOM, ECO change management. It is our PLM system.
- BOM building
- Easy item creation
- Revision visibility and access to previous releases
- Easy supplier item creation
- No flexibility in customizing ECO routing, information cannot be updated once initiated
- BOM allows duplicate items instead of combining qty
- No flags for duplicate PN's linking same vendor item
- Changes module is not customizable to add SN or date fields in implementation
- Needs better EPR system tie-in or offer procurement module
- No low-cost read-only access, becomes expensive if used across entire organization
- Improved time to market
- Improved NPD process
- Improved product release to sourcing and manufacturing
- Centralized parts database
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
Easy to implement PLM system
Arena was implemented in less than a month. Biggest time consumers were configurations and training
18
engineering, manufacturing, procurement
1
- PLM - design release, revision tracking, approval process
- BOM for manufacturing
- part information - supplier PN, drawings, etc
- tie it to ERP system