Arena PLM is da BOM
October 01, 2018
Arena PLM is da BOM
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
We use Arena for BOM management, change control, and to communicate those items with our contract manufacturers. Our Engineering Department creates and manages the BOMs. Our IT Department translates those BOMs for use in our ERP system. Our Operations Department references the BOMs to build products, to order contracted products from our Contract Manufacturers, and to manage inventory. Our Accounting Department also references the BOMs for costing and inventory purposes.
- Notification of required decisions relating to ECOs and BOMs.
- BOM management.
- Where it's used: being able to see what assemblies and sub-assemblies use a given part.
- Control of automatic updates to our ERP system - we use a manual process because it's so much easier to manage.
- Single system of record for our product BOMs and versions.
- Ease of access by employees, contractors, and vendors.
- Sped up NPI due to notification and decision tracking.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Third-party Reviews
We had a business need for a PLM system, and after review of multiple vendors we found that Arena would provide the needed functionality at a cost we were able to justify to upper management.
We had a difficult implementation primarily because our existing data was kept in spreadsheets and text files, and had to be manually collected and converted. We performed these tasks with in-house resources rather than contracting an outside firm to manage the implementation.
Oracle Agile is the only other product I can recall, since our implementation was over six years ago. I only remember that based on price alone, Oracle's product was not a serious contender for us. I had experience with Agile at a previous company (before it was purchased by Oracle) and at that time it was well-suited to our needs.