Arena in a small company environment
Updated November 19, 2019
Arena in a small company environment
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
We use Arena everyday for managing our product manufacturing and release process. It is used across most of the company, though it is used most by the engineering dept. It helps us keep track of the state for the multiple products in the manufacturing pipeline, allows us to communicate changes to our manufacturing partners, and access the information on currently released products.
- Allows access from any site. No need to install special software.
- Allows fairly fine-grained custom configuration of elements to help guide users in adding new Items and Files to the database.
- Does a good job of tracking inter-related items; for example when a high-level item with a large BoM tree is pushed to a new state (Design or Production), all items in the BoM tree are automatically checked to assure each is also in an compatible state. This means a high-level item cannot be released without also releasing all its components.
- There is likely no easy solution for this, but Arena is fairly complex software and there can be a learning curve for becoming comfortable with how it works. This is partly due to the flexibility it allows, which is a good thing. But flexibility and complexity often go hand-in-hand, as they do here.
- It would be nice if the Indented BoM view had a mechanism for expanding ALL sub-assemblies in one click--basically a "flat" view but with the "indented" organization, where all expansion "triangles" have been "opened" at all levels.
- In the Files world, the "Download now" when checking out a file does not always seem to download the file.
- I do not have access to this information in our company.
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
I have selected the choices above which I believe influenced our use of this product. However, I was not involved in the selection, nor would I likely be involved in selecting other software of this nature.
It took quite a lot of work to implement Arena. We rolled it out in a gradual process so folks could become accustomed to it over time. It is very different from the system(s) we used previously--which did not actually accomplish all the things Arena does. At the same time, Arena is not really an inventory tracking system, so it is one tool that fits into the set used to manage a business like ours.
Defining all the custom items we needed took a lot of time. And getting Attributes to a correct a usable state is still a somewhat on-going task as we become more familiar with Arena, and as our needs change.
Defining all the custom items we needed took a lot of time. And getting Attributes to a correct a usable state is still a somewhat on-going task as we become more familiar with Arena, and as our needs change.
I was not involved in this process so have no information here. We did not really have any PLM software prior to Arena. The inventory management system we were using tried to fulfill this roll as well and did not do a particularly good job of it.
Lessons for Success
Yes, Arena has been helpful in helping us keep track of our products.
The most important lesson learned is that it is very important to have good processes in place that integrate Arena use. Without defined processes Arena is just another database, though Arena does help guide those processes.
The most important lesson learned is that it is very important to have good processes in place that integrate Arena use. Without defined processes Arena is just another database, though Arena does help guide those processes.
Arena seems designed primarily for hardware products. But with appropriate process guidelines, it can be used for software products as well. In particular, having an Item Category for released software, and including the final file (installer, executable, etc.) to be publicly released as part of the "File" tab for the release Item is helpful.
Think about the Item Categories you want to use for organizing components, both logical and physical, for the products to be created. They can be changed over time, but coming as close as possible to the desired categories saves time and helps guide the process.
Also make sure you create process documents for how Arena is to be used in your organization.
Also make sure you create process documents for how Arena is to be used in your organization.