Item: Arena PLM and QMS
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Arena

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Arena is being used across the whole organization, however it is more specifically used by regulatory, quality, and operations departments. We use Arena as our main document control system for our device, including our Device Master Record and Design History Files, as well as all of our quality system documents. When manufacturing our system, all documents of the latest revision are pulled from Arena prior to the initiation of any stage. Our quality system goes through updates often, and these are documented in Arena after review by the respective team members.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy navigation and search of documents.
Display of information.
ECO process, steps are clear and to the point.

Cons

I'd like to see some functionality that assists the creation and fulfillment of document types based on existing documents. For examples, across our organization the same type of report may be placed in different categories because the creator isn't informed. If there is a way to either compare, search for similar documents based on type when creating a document, this would prevent confusion.
I'd like the ability to create reports and plans that are directly linked to each other, rather than just by a numbering system. Some sort of link between these two would be easier for traceability.

Return on Investment

Maintains are quality system and CAPA practices to standard.
Ease of use increases time to market, on-boarding of new users is typically a quick process.

Key Differentiators

Product Features

Alternatives Considered

Omnify

Arena is much more straight forward than other doc control platforms I've used in terms of ease of use and ease of search. The naming conventions of the item categories, as well as the change processes are clear and intuitive should a revision need to be made. In previous systems I've used, there was a grey area between "files" and "items" which caused issues when revising an uploading new versions of documents. Additionally, I like that the document revisions and history is able to be searched fairly easily.

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat DC, Microsoft Office 2016

Likelihood to Recommend

I think Arena is good for use in our quality system, in terms of managing specific documents. The update and revision of documents is straightforward, and the ECO process is easy to understand.

In terms of our device master record, including all part drawings and work instructions that are pulled from these, it doesn't work as well. A more visual layout of products/ BOM's/ parts that go into a system and documents/work instructions that provide support to this would appeal to me.

Using Arena

Comments

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Alaine Portnoy
(Vendor Representative) commented 5 years ago
Thank you for providing a thorough review of Arena! Glad to hear Arena has been helpful for your product teams to keep processes going while everyone works remotely and you've been able to onboard new employees using training management. Also, reach out to customer success with your questions/requests about document types and reporting. They're there to help!

Quick learning curve & easy on-boarding process!