Arena PLM & QMS Reviews & Product Details

Arena is easy to navigate. The ease of use is high. There are good process flow diagrams. The file storage included in the system is a big plus. It is very easy to communicate changes internally to my company and to our external customers and suppliers. It is easy to tell which suppliers and users have access to each individual part. I love being able to see the integrated Bill of Material usages in the system. The "Where Used" and integrated Bill of Materials are easy to navigate. The change management and version history is a huge plus. It is easy to see older revisions and quickly navigate to each change, permanent and temporary deviations. Arena is easily the best PLM software I have used to date. We recently switched and I really enjoy Arena. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is no integrated training or tips. At least from what I've seen. Once you understand what to do it's very easy but the initial learning curve is high. I would recommend an easy to use help button on each page. There could also be tips and tricks. Or a FAQ page. Or integrated training videos with help desk personnel. It would be nice for parts that have a 3d model uploaded to be able to see an "at a glance" snapshot picture of the model in the part overview. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The basic PLM information is easy to create and control. It's user friendly, which reduced the learning curve and allowed me to ramp up my productivity in a short time. The ability to open a specific file and access multiple linked information within that file without having to open multiple screens. The updated ability to upload files through drag and drop. Centralized location for compliance documentation associated to items within a product. Arena is a good tool for managing complex Bill of Materials and supplier/sourcing relationships. Sourcing info is easy to find, and it's easy to see where a specific component is used. Turn around time is short and the approval process is easy to manage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The user interface is not very visually appealing. The search functions are not always the best. I have to specify search criteria before I search. I would prefer to enter a part number or file name and have it just search by the entered information. No spell check. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Simple GUI and User Friendly. No complex features. I like the report tool which is easy to handle compared to other PLM tool in the market. I like the feature to add additional attributes for each company users. I like the update and training that Arena gurus are scheduling quarterly. Help tool within the Arena is helping us to train other people and videos and screenshots used under that help is great. I like the file feature which is supporting lots of file format. I found Administrators have good right and very easy to operate in work space setting. Linkage between all worlds to ECO which is great feature compared to other PLM tools available in the market. Supply chain department is happy to see the amount of information that Arena allows to add for supplier creation and supplier items which is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like to see more simple Disposition of parts. I would like to see more integration to current ERP tools available in the market. Not having this feature sometime creating integration problems and customer has to spend more money to buy additional software so PLM and ERP can talk to each other. I would like to see the more powerful Integration between CAD tools and Arena PLM. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like the best about arena is the Ability to the withdraw COs, that's great. No need to ask Doc control. I've used reliance and element document control systems and they didn't have that function. This a great function save on time by not having to go to doc control to withdraw my CO. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't like the way redlines get added to COs, Adding redlines to COs is somewhat cumbersome, not straight forward. I would like to able to drag in redlines and clean copies on the same page and not have to navigate through the system to link it. Also don't like the way clean copies get uploaded. On the reliance system, I would go to one page and on the bottom of that page I was able to upload my clean copy and my redlines. Very simple and very easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ability to communicate official documents with the rest of the company. I also like that Arena is frequently providing updates to the system, many of which are useful and improve user efficiency. I like that there's the ability to leave notes on each item in an ECO. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Can be slow. Recent updates have improved functionality (such as the new file upload UI), but some things are unclear. It is unclear how to review ECOs and compare BOMs. I wish there was a way to search and save items (such as to a BOM) more efficiently, instead of 1 by 1 with each part number. I also wish there was some kind of "To do list" functionality, where I can mark items on an ECO that I haven't finished updating yet, instead of just having to open each part in a separate tab so I don't forget. I wish there was somehow a way to make it more obvious to a non-experienced Arena user (such as someone who doesn't create items or ECOs, but only logs in to view official documents) that the revision they're on is WORKING if it's not yet released. There should be a way to view all the Scribes you are following on the dashborad, instead of just new messages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Having all quality documents stored in the cloud is extremely helpful, especially in these times of working from home. Document revision flow is fairly intuitive and streamlined. Eliminates the need to follow a paper trail every time a change is made to a document. Improves company workflow. Encourages continuous improvement of all documentation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are certain irrelevant features / fields that detract from the workflow. The user must be trained on which menu items are relevant and rely on their own checklist for how/what to complete. It would be nice if there was some kind of internal step-by-step template for a document revision. An online document viewer would reduce the amount of time spent downloading and opening documents. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Good place to manage BOM including: parts, SKU, assemblies, etc.

Improvements around creating ECRs and ECOs make it much easier.

Manage release with ECR, ECO, SCAR, PRCR, PRCN.

Easy to search and manage electrical and mechanical parts.

Way to manage part datasheet and RoHS on a per part basis.

Easy tab system for Items, Requests, Changes, Suppliers, Supplier Items, Files and Reports. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Can be difficult when first learning structure and Rev Control.

Need an easy way to incorporate Items in Request or Change into Details part of the Change or Request.

Not always obvious Supplier access was missed.

Need some sort of checker with parameters when releasing request and changes to verify certain parameters are completed. For Example supplier access on Change or Request. Notifications are setup to notify the correct group, supplier or people.

Need an easy way to duplicated many of a similar part where most attributes are the same. Duplication is only to duplicate a single part.

When adding existing file and it does not exist there should be an option in that same box to upload a new file. Many times you search for a file and if it is not there you have to close the window then go to Add New File.

I have had problems where using Chrome where the screen is blank when I haven't work on the screen for 10+ minutes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Arena does a great job of doing the necessities right such as:

1) BOM Management

Creating Multi level BOMs and outlining components in a BOM is simple

2) Supplier Management

Keeping track of all Suppliers in the system along with granting approved suppliers access to the system is a huge plus

3) Part Creation

Simple & Consistent no matter what type of part you are creating. Configurable attributes depending on the category

4) QMS

Changes & Quality module are highly customizable and can link well to each other

5) ECO Management

Tracking the changes to an item that are within a change is easy to do with the Redlines function.

Notifications can be configured when an ECO is not approved with a certain amount of time Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

User Experience can feel a bit wonky at times since certain actions take multiple clicks to get to your desired information.

Sometimes it feels like there is a bit of information overload when viewing items or changes in the system for new users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like best about Arena is that it seems very organized and easy to find related documents. I like how it groups similar SOP's and batch records together for training purposes. I also like the reminder emails to remind me when I need to complete modules. I also like that there are lots of fields to search by to find the document that you are looking for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Arena is a little more difficult than our old quality control system. With our old quality control/document system you could check an item out to review and make tracked changes. With Arena, we have been having to email the document to each other to make corrections. This is inconvenient when the document has to be reviewed by multiple people because everyone makes changes on the document sent to them and they have to be combined later which is more work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Especially with the update, the slick new design makes the usage experience much more satisfying. Arena has a lots of efficiency tricks. I can add multiple items to a BOM at the same time, or add an item to multiple BOMs at the same time. By sending communications directly from Arena, I can point the administrator directly to a change request with a direct link. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The file editions and item editions are a bit confusing to distinguish. I personally do not use file editions to track updates to items, so it's unnecessary for me to input edition numbers every time I make an intermittent update to an item. Furthermore, I can't track the past file editions to a single revision of an item. There is also no good way to track multiple submissions of a change request. I have no context on whether something has been updated between the last withdrawal and the new submission of a request if the user doesn't put any comments in the summary or personally communicates the change. The submission is also not tied to automatic routing, and evaluations have to be manually requested. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

customer support in arena is very good and are quick to reply and answer our needs. I like the freedom on being able to create the templates to fit your need. Buying the product package that includes courses on how to set up arena is extremely beneficial to understand how to create an effective template for your organizational needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

some of the processes are redundant can be made better by changing the way it is implemented. A lot of the stuff that requires manual attention can be automated. Setting up arena can be hard especially without the tutorial series offered by the arena. The number of people familiar with arena is still limited and could be hard to source people to work on and could lead to a long training plan to bring people up to speed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that everything is stored on servers, and that file management is very simple, while establishing revisions and locking versions that have been ratified. The new drag and drop feature was also appreciated so that I could add multiple files at once and not have to search for the directory constantly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like to see some automatic file detection settings, to recognize certain files as CAD or Drawings. I also would like perhaps some in-browser 3D preview capabilities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The value Arena brings to our company is that most of our information is accessible in one tool. From Items to sourcing to change management to quality to training. The ease of use for our users is of the upmost importance and haven't heard any complaints. From an audit perspective the auditors love it as there is history and improvements in processes are tracked. The ability to share information with suppliers is important and speeds up our manufacturing processes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I had written that I wasn't crazy about the request module, however I've recently been using this module and it does have benefit. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

User interface, documentation capability, easy navigation and easy submission for approval Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Features are not bad. It could have been better. I wish there was a feature where I can easily go from one document to another by simply clicking the reference document instead of having to search it from the search bar. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Extremely organized and regimented - perfect for intensive quality management systems; reliable Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Not the best user interface - could be a bit more user friendly; for new employees, it takes a decent amount of time to train and get used to system Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

With the newest update, you're able to drag and drop files to upload. Once you have the workstation set up, it's easy to create new items and route for approvals. It's very user friendly and the ability to report out data makes it useful for analysis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't like that when you search items, the default is only 20 items and you have to "select all" every time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The main thing I like about arena is that it is such an upgrade compared to the method my company was using before. Digital is the future of data storage, and I think arena made the transition from physical very easy. Granted, I am younger than many of my peers and would say that I am technologically versed so I had an easy time transitioning to this online system, but even so, my older peers only took a couple months and some training sessions to perform basic tasks necessary to continue processing documents. The ease of collaboration makes the entire process much more efficient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only dislike I have for the system is that documents must be downloaded to local drives in order to be viewed. I believe having a function where documents can be opened in the browser as a PDF, and still maintaining the option to download, would be more useful as documents do not always need to be edited but rather just viewed. Additionally, I dislike the fact that the whole system is relatively slow, so to circumvent this inefficiency I typically open each new item/dco in a new tab. It would be great if the system could automatically do this as I know I'm not the only person that uses arena like this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

BoM, document and part control is excellent. Training and projects are basic, but good. Quality is limited, good for some things, unwieldy for others. Arena is as good as competitors overall. Stronger in some areas (kicks MasterControl butt in BoM control) and weaker in others (redlining and collaboration). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Unable to set up dynamic forms (change requested input based on chosen field value). For the price, the lack of dynamic ability is extremely frustrating. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Arena is easy to use and has a fairly straightforward user interface. It is helpful that Arena has different worlds that can be leveraged for different needs (items, training, quality, projects, etc.). The dashboard feature is very helpful to see what tasks I need to complete. The scribe functionality is also extremely helpful in that it is an integrated platform that can be used for quick and efficient cross functional communication. Additionally, the ability to cross link different items types (changes, quality notifications, items, files, etc.) is helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ideally Arena would be more customizable. For example, I would like items to automatically go to an Alpha revision if the In production life cycle is selected. Arena could also improve the reports functionality. There seems to be a lot data that is not accessible via the reports. Additionally, it would be helpful to have an audit trail within Arena to see what changes were made by which user and when. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the process of seeing the revisions of a part and navigating to a working revision. This makes it clear which revision of a part you are working on at a time. Having BOM, costing, and all files used as well as a revision history all available and tracked within a part is critical for our company's use case. Additionally, the ability to collaborate with many colleagues around the world with this one centralized database is a very necessary tool for us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I do not love the UI, and I find it a bit challenging at times. Specifically the search feature, with its multiple drop-down menus.

When you click on a tab (requests, suppliers, changes, etc.) it is sometimes not clear that you are actually inside that tab, which can make things a bit confusing.

I also wish that, when looking at a part in arena, the files associated with that part would be immediately available rather than having to navigate through the tabs. This way I click on a part and am immediately shown the available files and can download some or all of them right away.

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