Arena, The Essential Electronic Design Assistant
October 01, 2018
Arena, The Essential Electronic Design Assistant
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
My company needed a tool for managing its database of bills of material and their electronic components that enables us to perform the following functions:
1. Maintaining the approved vendor list for each component.
2. Generating BOM on demand by directly interface with our CAD system.
3. Collaborating design effort between different engineering departments for optimal design cycle.
4. Sharing information between cross-functional teams for project planning/executing with efficiency.
1. Maintaining the approved vendor list for each component.
2. Generating BOM on demand by directly interface with our CAD system.
3. Collaborating design effort between different engineering departments for optimal design cycle.
4. Sharing information between cross-functional teams for project planning/executing with efficiency.
- Providing means of generating accurate PCBA BOMs from our CAD system.
- Keeping track of our electronic component approved vendor list.
- We have yet figure out on how to make BOM item numbers non-consecutive, e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20 vs. 1, 2, 3, 4, due to the dynamics of our business requirement. The skipping of item numbers allows space to add new items without reassigning item numbers for existing components therefore minimizing document/drawing update.
- As mentioned earlier, Arena enables us to better collaborate design efforts and optimize product design cycles that result in better NPI to production transition and more efficient product design and launch cycles.
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Third-party Reviews
Arena has the capability to interface with our electronic CAD that enables maintaining our electronic component database and generate accurate BOMs. To help showcasing this feature, we owe it to the Arena application engineer by the name of Doug Johnson who instrumentally assisted us with the implementation of the Arena/CAD integration and bringing up our component database. With that initial support, we were convinced that Arena capable features are what we needed and moved forwards with the purchase.
As mentioned in last question, the implementation team mainly consisted of Doug Johnston performed an outstanding job at helping us to integrate our electronic CAD system with Arena and bringing up our electronic component database which had truly shown Arena's useful capabilities. We were extremely satisfied with the Arena implementation team.
We evaluated other products including Windchill, Agile prior to selecting Arena to move forwards with.