PLM that you can tackle yourself!
March 11, 2020
PLM that you can tackle yourself!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
We use Arena for BOM management, engineering change orders, document change orders, workflow management, training controls, and various aspects of our Quality Management System. Arena is used by Engineering, Operations, Support, and Manufacturing departments and has been a big advantage for configuration control, plus communication. Overall, Arena has been a huge helper!
- BOM management
- ECO/DCO workflow
- UI/UX design has improved with the new version
- PDF export of redline BOMs is poor/missing
- Analytics section could be stronger
- Alerts for trends would be helpful
- Reduced cost of quality
- Improved value-added activities for staff - instead of doc management
- Improved time to market
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Vendor Reputation
Price vs. value was the key driver. The PLM/PDM space is well established, and a lot of companies are trying to add more 'perks' to suggest increased value. We've found these 'perks' dilute other product benefits as they defocus on making a great PLM/PDM. So for us, it was all about the price to value.
Arena was quite easy to deploy. We did it entirely our-self over three months. The key was lots of upfront planning and digging into the details on what Arena could and could not do before jumping in. Overall we were quite satisfied with the deployment and would recommend it to others.
Arena is only a PLM solution, so if you need PDM + PLM, look elsewhere. Or use a separate PDM to your PLM system. Large companies with complex products may find this an issue, but if you can streamline your PLM use Arena could be a good fit. Once you get past that decision, the differences between products become more straightforward to assess.