Arena PLM + QMS for AWS GovCloud
Arena, a PTC businessReviews from AWS customer
0 AWS reviews
-
5 star0
-
4 star0
-
3 star0
-
2 star0
-
1 star0
External reviews
397 reviews
from
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Arena PLM for small business
What do you like best about the product?
Arena has great usability. Training users and setting up permissions is very straightforward. What my users enjoy is that the interface is user friendly and uncomplicated.
What do you dislike about the product?
There’s nothing to link upload of documents automatically to the system. You can write or purchase APIs to assist, but you may not be able to achieve your desired results. Many of my users also find it difficult to distinguish between the Files and Items worlds and constantly get them confused.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Arena has helped to structure bill of materials and drawing organization and release. All changes and requests from internal groups and contract manufacturers can be executed through this program.
The benefits have been better organization and more verification for release of bill of materials and implementation of changes
The benefits have been better organization and more verification for release of bill of materials and implementation of changes
Overall good
What do you like best about the product?
Responsive customer support. Good documentation of approval process for product releases.
What do you dislike about the product?
Not very user friendly for new users. Some permissions issues (like unable to prevent uses from editing supplier items without eco). Document management is not the best.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Revision control for our products. Much better organization of documentation and approval process.
Powerful Product Life Management (PLM) Software
What do you like best about the product?
Arena combines several disparate systems into a single software platform and makes managing PLM so much easier! Plus, reviewing and approving Engineering Change Orders is a cinch (we were using a paper-based system before).
What do you dislike about the product?
I only started using Arena a couple months ago, so I have yet to find something that I do not like.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We were using a paper-based system for our ECOs, in conjunction with a FileMaker Pro database, and storing all of our released documents on a server. In addition, different departments were storing unreleased versions of documents on other servers, so documents were difficult to find. Arena makes reviewing and approving ECOs and managing documents at all stages of product development much easier.
Sr. Document Control
What do you like best about the product?
User friendly and the apps looks great.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing at the moment, I love the system and have no problem using it
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Technical support are great
Recommendations to others considering the product:
It a very good tool for Products Lifecycles Management
Arena all the way - great software for PLM
What do you like best about the product?
Everything is on the cloud.
It is easy to use, and there are more than one way to do something.
It has outward access to vendors.
It makes the ECO process almost automated.
It is easy to use, and there are more than one way to do something.
It has outward access to vendors.
It makes the ECO process almost automated.
What do you dislike about the product?
1) Sometimes, if you don't have good internet speed, this software can be annoying to use.
2) It is not as intuitive for a newbie - various levels of intervening that take some time to understand - i.e. it is not plug and play
2) It is not as intuitive for a newbie - various levels of intervening that take some time to understand - i.e. it is not plug and play
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Streamlining the manufacturing process
Easy hand over from engineering to manufacturing
Easy hand over from engineering to manufacturing
Recommendations to others considering the product:
User intuitiveness is needed.
User support needs to improve significantly.
User support needs to improve significantly.
Onboarding at Arena
What do you like best about the product?
Platform flexibility, resources, trust in product.
What do you dislike about the product?
UI is really tired. Hard to get up and running.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
QMS compliance for 13485 design holder and PLM traceability.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Easy to engage. Management is really attempting to monetize the product right now, which increases the financial barriers for acquisition. Especially as a startup.
Arena is a perfect one stop shop solution for start up to medium size medical device companies.
What do you like best about the product?
First and foremost, I love Arena’s cloud base platform, which reduces cost by eliminating hardware and extra resources. It is easy to learn, easy to use and easy on the eyes - very GUI oriented. What you see is what you get - Arena's worlds make it extremely easy for a user to go from Item to Supplier to Quality process to Training.
What do you dislike about the product?
Arena could improve on the Quality templates. It would help if we could move fields around in a template, like we would be able to in Adobe forms or Word.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Working at start-up companies taught me to be creative with my time and resources because we tend to wear many different hats as we create and shape the company's processes and standard operating procedures. Arena has given us the ability to be extremely efficient with our time and the lack of resources. The biggest benefit is the fact that wherever I go, as long as I have my surface or my smart phone, I can be 'in the office' working on ECOs, or creating new templates, following up on implementation actions, uploading files, creating items or creating BOMs... and, wherever my approvers are, if needed, they can approve on the fly as long as there is internet connection and their smart phone or laptop.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
The most cost friendly PLM/QMS solution in the market. Arena gives you more bang for the buck!!!
Simple, straightforward PLM/eQMS system
What do you like best about the product?
Arena is a very simple PLM system with eQMS hooks. It mostly works one way out of the box with very limited customization required. Importing and exporting of data is very straightforward. Engineers are familiar with it.
What do you dislike about the product?
Part of Arena's simplicity is driven from its rather limited ability to be customized. That's not inherently a bad thing, but there are a few flows that could stand to be a bit more customizeable.
The off-the-shelf connectors get so, so close to offering something totally workable out of the box, but managed to miss the mark in some small way that required some customization.
For example: the SolidWorks connector doesn't pull the solidworks BOM automatically, despite sales literature showing that was indeed a feature. We developed our own quick script to do so.
Similar challenges were had with the integration to ERP: estimated costing, approved vendors, and some item metadata one would assume would be transferred to ERP were not, requiring some scripting on our end or incurring additional integration costs.
Still, it's a lot closer to being off-the-shelf than pretty much everything else out there we've used.
The off-the-shelf connectors get so, so close to offering something totally workable out of the box, but managed to miss the mark in some small way that required some customization.
For example: the SolidWorks connector doesn't pull the solidworks BOM automatically, despite sales literature showing that was indeed a feature. We developed our own quick script to do so.
Similar challenges were had with the integration to ERP: estimated costing, approved vendors, and some item metadata one would assume would be transferred to ERP were not, requiring some scripting on our end or incurring additional integration costs.
Still, it's a lot closer to being off-the-shelf than pretty much everything else out there we've used.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Dramatic reduction in effort to release a part
QMS behavior that links to parts
Connectivity with ERP
Better value chain
QMS behavior that links to parts
Connectivity with ERP
Better value chain
Recommendations to others considering the product:
The usual recommendations of figure out flows, try early and often to find annoying and goofy behavior
Clean, powerful PLM which hits a sweet spot for early implementation
What do you like best about the product?
Intuitive environment and UI, relatively easy training for new users, simple supplier access
What do you dislike about the product?
Many mass import/export or environment reconfiguration operations exist outside of Arena entirely and are performed in offline excel.
Some supplier visibility and approver routing operations are limited and complicated.
Supplier item changes versus item changes and relationships can sometimes be unpredictable.
Some supplier visibility and approver routing operations are limited and complicated.
Supplier item changes versus item changes and relationships can sometimes be unpredictable.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Design and documentation revision tracking, clear supplier communication, BOM tracking.
We've realized efficiency benefits in having a centralized revision controlled BOM for numerous products and test fixtures, while improving supplier communication. Also serves as a high confidence design file storage location.
We've realized efficiency benefits in having a centralized revision controlled BOM for numerous products and test fixtures, while improving supplier communication. Also serves as a high confidence design file storage location.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Start early.
Rigid But Powerful
What do you like best about the product?
Arena's ability to track and record item data, provide access to suppliers, and release changes in a structured manor are its strengths. Items in Arena are separated between internal and external [supplier] items and provides a platform to set up complex relationships between the two sets - this along with the ability to control files/attributes for each item type separately creates a powerful way to control procurement and build to order specifications. Setting up partner access is quick and access parameters are straight forward. The change record features are sufficient and if processes can support supplier feedback in Arena, tracking implementation discussions and status of change records are available. The floor to implement Arena PLM is very low so long as the standard workflows align with company processes. The nature of Arena being a cloud based application makes accessibility its greatest feature. Item data is available anywhere in the world and complex supply chains are unified on one unified platform.
What do you dislike about the product?
Process workflows and power user tools are somewhat rigid. Complex revision policies, proper product development tracking, and mass item update tools could all use improvement. Item revision policies force the latest revision to be the effective revision universally - in this model there is no control over the effectivity of incremental updates to BOM items. There are ways to get around this issue, but it leads to unnecessary complexity which is something a small business can't afford. Other PLM products offer linked/mirrored developmental and production workspaces, Arena does not have this feature. There is no straight forward way to track the incremental development stages for items that have already been released to a production lifecycle phase. For a small business in a constant state of growth and change - mass updates of item attributes is unfortunately a common place thing. Arena is constantly improving, but mass changes are largely still an incredibly manual process.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Arena provides a baseline and straight forward source of record. Despite some shortcomings that can often lead to confusion, processes can be created around the Arena platform that align worldwide suppliers together to build complex products.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
For a platform with such a easy set up, Arena is quite powerful. To get the most out of the platform, however, it would need someone familiar with the its limitations to properly set up the categories and item attribute fields to get the most out Arena from the start.
showing 331 - 340