Arena PLM - clean and powerful tool
Updated December 02, 2019
Arena PLM - clean and powerful tool
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
We currently use Arena across our entire organization. Everyone from our QA, Engineers, NPI, and hardware guy use it. We have all our parts, suppliers, files, products in Arena as well. We store our internal company documents as well as our Work Procedures in Arena so employees can grab any necessary information quickly and efficiently. It helps us track all of our parts and it means no more BOMS in Excel which is great. Tracking ECOs are another benefit of Arena as it empowers us to see a track record of everything.
- Tracking Changes is extremely easy and looking back at past changes and which items were affected is great.
- The overall basic UX of Arena is simple enough to grasp and a lot of the different views are conveniently within grasp.
- Storing all different kinds of file types is useful. From Software data, to powerpoints, to pdfs. Arena handles it all very well and being able to grab the data with one search is extremely effective.
- Arena Analytics provides a good foundation for reporting throughout the system
- Limiting users from viewing only Approved Suppliers is not an option unless you implement Access Policies. Since Access Policies is additive in nature we have to think backwards when implementing. This occurs with several other views that we want to block so to get around this we created a rule but then we don't enable it in order for us to block that view from being seen.
- Training Plans can be viewed by everyone even if they are not assigned to that training plan. This can be an issue because employees can view WIs that they are not assigned to. There should be a feature that we can use to limit users to only viewing training plans that they are assigned to.
- If Arena was able to tailor the Quality module so users can have sign off steps and steps with attributes combined that would be helpful.
- I do not have any quantitative data to support the impact it has had.
- Product Usability
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
I was not present during the decision to purchase Arena but from my standpoint, I would want a PLM tool that was powerful but easy to use at the same time. I would want it to empower our engineers and our business but not hinder us in our core competencies.
I was not present during the implementation time but I did hear that the Arena support team was helpful during the transition.