Arena - More than a supplier-customer relationship!
Updated August 17, 2023
Arena - More than a supplier-customer relationship!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena PLM and QMS
Arena is used throughout the company and by most departments and all our divisions, here and abroad. It is also used by our assembly partners for parts selection and supply chain planning. Being a cloud-based solution, Arena permits many gains in time and timeliness of communications while keeping everything available to everyone at anytime anywhere. By communicating designs in real-time, Arena permits us to not only save time but reduce errors and roll out better designs faster. Time to market is key, and Arena has helped us with this. Really appreciate all the help so far, keep up the great work!
- Having partners and suppliers be part of ECOs throughout their lifecycle
- Sharing procedures and documents in real-time anywhere at any time
- Provide a secure area for our documents and designs
- Ease of use and support
- Some mass edit features could be added, such as changing suppliers in sourcing for all affected parts when a semiconductor company acquires another company but keeps the same part numbers...currently parts need to be changed individually.
- It has reduced our New Product Introduction time by releasing BOMs, parts, and documents faster and more efficiently to all our suppliers and partners simultaneously.
- Time to market has been faster and more efficient also; processes and procedures are clear and easy to follow.
Arena support and help have been tremendous since our partnership began. Doug J. and Joshua R. have been key players with supporting Trilliant and adding value to Arena by providing innovative solutions, tips, and shortcuts and adding tools to improve our efficiency and our ability to harness some of the power that Arena has. This allows us to tap into Arena's powerful features that would otherwise be unknown or would have taken a lot more time to find. They have given us the trust and confidence to reach out and to continue to use Arena more and roll it out through more users at a faster pace and with a better payback to us. It has been and continues to be a WIN-WIN relationship. Many thanks to all Arena support personnel for all their continued help and assistance.
Arena's implementation was done fast and seamlessly. We had assistance throughout all phases and the implementation was with us at all steps of the exercise. The implementation was done on time and roll out through facilities was done effortlessly. As always, Arena provides great valuer for the money,
Do you think Arena PLM and QMS delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Arena PLM and QMS's feature set?
Yes
Did Arena PLM and QMS live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Arena PLM and QMS go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Arena PLM and QMS again?
Yes
I was not involved with SAP when it was evaluated but feedback from others SAP was chosen without full knowledge of ARENA's capabilities in these areas.
Using Arena PLM and QMS
Yes Arena does a good job in covering these areas. all of these are covered but we mainly use the RoHS, REACH and ISO features which are easy to use and make our re-certifications easier and faster with registrars.
Arena being Cloud based made the transition painless and seemless for us. We could communicate in real time with out supply base and teams 24/7 which was highlighted even more with the pandemic.
Users have more than doubled in the 12 years we have implemented ARENA. We integrated Silicon Expert as an add on to help with parts lifecycle and procurement. Partners and preferred supplier trippled in this time and their integration was also quite fast and seemless. All of these expansion/transition have become more and more efficient and quite easy to do.
Quality, speed, ease of access, security and good communication are not options; with ARENA you get it all at a high degree.
Always positive and customer oriented, always on point.
75 - Supply Chain, certification, Firmware Engineering, Software Engineering, Quality support, Hardware Engineering, Electrical engineering.
5 - Technicians, engineering managers and engineers
- Different suppliers and partners access
- Integration of merger and acquisition entities database into Arena
- Fast and easy roll out of licenses at overseas locations
- Recognition of Arena when applying for ISO certification/renewal
- Use of Arena in conjunction with other software/tools such as SolidWorks, Silicon Expert, etc.
Lessons for Success
Introducing new product lines/new business unit integrations. We have had 3 major product integrations in the past 5 years, all of which were different in their challenges and from where we started. Arena was able to analyze our different needs and propose alternate solutions adapted to our needs. Most of these have increase the speed in which we were able to input parts/documents/BOM's and data from different systems and software. In some cases, we even had special tools developed on the fly especially for us which were life savers for us, one experience come to mind when Doug Johnston from Arena, developped a quick dBase tool that permitted us to load new parts and BOM's quickly and efficiently from an Archaic Excel format!
May not be advanced bu the redline and compare features are very useful when customers ask for differences from different revisions or to make sure ECR and ECO's have been properly implemented and that nothing was missed.
Use and experiment with the advanced Arena filters. These offer a myriad search options using logical operations. One can literally find anything in Arena with 2, 3, or 4 filters...we have in the upwards of 30K different parts and BOM's in ARENA and we use these several time a day to quickly find (in less than 30 seconds) any component, part, document....etc that is part of our ARENA huge database.
Evaluating Arena PLM and QMS and Competitors
Yes - We were using back in 2007 Lotus and Excel to do most of our PLM...needless to say that ARENA was a MAJOR upgrade for us!
I would probably recommend to my management to skip a few of the other PLM providers we evaluated and narrow it to 2 or 3, including ARENA in the selection process!
Arena PLM and QMS Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - Trial, test and production.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - None that I remember, everything was done smoothly and effortlessly.
- Training
- Getting used to the environment.
Arena PLM and QMS Training
Configuring Arena PLM and QMS
I think ARENA PLM is already at the best practices level IMO!
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - To get reports and applications we did not have and it was easy to do with the expert help from ARENA!
No - we have not done any custom code
None that comes to mind.
Arena PLM and QMS Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes
In some cases where time to market is of essence, if we do not have a direct path to the solution we will ask ARENA support team...in 90% of these cases, our ARENA support team or Joshua Robbins, Doug Johnston and Lori Austin have chipped in and given us the solution free of charge. In some more technical and time sensitive issues, we have required and payed for premium services and every time we did, Trilliant got their moneys worth and more. Arena support team are extremely knowledgeable, efficient and will go the extra mile to satisfy us. Time and money wisely invested...my two cents!
Yes - Only once that I can remember and it was due to an internet provider issue...it was quickly resolved.
Several times but once that occurred late last year. We needed to have parts that were OBSOLETED but that appeared ONLY in OBSOLETED and Abandoned BOM's. We worked with Doug Johnston who assisted us in outputting a huge data file which with his assistance, could filter out non needed parts and get to OBSOLETE parts THAT were ONLY contained in OBSOLETED parts. The process was even automated to get it downloaded in our ARENA dashboard automatically once a month. By doing this, we were able to effectively and quickly remove obsoleted parts from our inventory and from our partners inventory.
Using Arena PLM and QMS
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Searches with Advance fucntion
- BOM Compare
- Redline feature
- Searching for ECO title in an ECO list opened in a screen...ECO title width limited and truncates part of the title