Arena QMS - Avis

Having a centralized document control system is extremely important to product engineering companies. Arena creates the one source of truth where everyone can find the released documents and their related histories.

The UI has improved greatly over the last year or so, with a new search feature and a drag and drop document upload. There are still some improvements I'd like to see, specifically with the spacing of different sections. There is a lot of empty space on some screens.

User friendly and easy to understand. Sourcing information helps collect the data smoothly and accurately.

Arena adds one part at a time in the Bill of Material tab section. This consumes a lot of user time.
There is not a good interface with the Oracle system, since it does not account revision when its revised in Arena

ARENA is a very user friendly platform and easy to navigate. It has made it easy for our company to create, document, and maintain Bill of Materials and show visibility to those in our company, as well as third party suppliers/contract manufacturers.
Requests and Changes are easily created and implemented.

The user interface itself looks a little outdated. Some of the integrations aren't exactly what was desired. Even with the Third party integrations, there is a good bit of backend, manual entry to be done.

Because we rolled out Arena for Doc Control, QMS, Training, etc all at once, it was the first time I've seen a eQMS work well together. I love the integration of all the components and "worlds" and that once you understand the logic, it's very intuitive.

We have not been able to create reports out of Arena to get the Quality metrics that we'd like. That may be partly because we haven't put the correct fields in. The good news is that it is easy to download data into Excel and manipulate the data from there. Arena is very good responding to requests, so it is improving all the time.

The sheer flexibility and ease of use, combined with a low barrier to entry and learning curve. Combine that with both desktop and mobile accessibility and you have a best-in-class offering.

There are a couple of feature enhancements that I've been waiting for a while now, but I also recognize that 1) there are workarounds for those missing elements that are functional, just not pretty and 2) Arena support has shown a clear track record of listening and responding to customer feedback, so I'm fairly confident I'll see those new addons someday.

The most useful feature of the software is the ability to assign users to "roles" which allow for proxy reviewers and approvers.

The software is limited in some key functions for my organization. Primarily, the software lacks analytical capabilities. The system is also slow and will not allow more than one window to be open at a time. This made reviewing and comparing records difficult and slow.

The BOM and Part system are great. It is easy to do ECOs and have Arena integrate with ERP systems such as SAP.

There is not much that I do not like. I think the module that could be improved is the Quality module to be more of a workflow, but it could also be that our use-case is not very standard.

I like training management, reminders, DCO, item creations

It would be nice to be back to sign off trainings on files and ot only items. Examles, if I have 1 itema with 5 files in it, the training plan allowas to sign on the primary file only.
In addition would be nice to get the document number automatically printed on pdf, to avoid human error

UI is easy to navigate and understand, not complex and bogged down by too many features

Not all implemented updates are consistent across platform yet(files uploading)

It has been very reliable in terms of service providing and quality management. The features of Arena QMS stand out in performance compared to rest of the products.

They are a bit on costlier side and have to show empathy during customer support.

Creation of items, uploading and routing for reviews are at high ease.

the searching query can be better because currently, we can only search with items that are definite. We need to remember them.

The change module, items module, and quality module, ease of use, and customer service at ARENA

No cons at this time.

The change control and lifecycle management is well implemented and makes version control very easy to process and review.

Sourcing and costing is something that isn't easy to use. I would like to see version control and better API endpoints as retrieving, updating and using this data can be challenging.

The system is the best document management system that I have used ever in my 10 years of working experience in 4 companies across several industries.

I have not experienced a downside to this system.

The functions in the software make bill of material keeping consistent and reliable.

The search engine and the need to manually click to show more per page gets annoying.

Keep tracking of BOMs and training records

User experience and Graphic user interface can improve a great deal.

It works pretty well for processing change orders and searching is pretty simple.

There is no out of office function to pause training due dates for employees with an extended out of office. When I reached out to Arena support, I was told that there is no function for out of office and I was not given any timeline for when that function will be added. I have used MasterControl and when I have to change training due dates in Arena, there is no option to include a comment when I have to change a user's training due date. Mastercontrol asks for comments whenever you edit.

The configurability and wide array of abilities is what drew us to Arena. The support was A+ from the start.

The configuration period is lengthy if you aren't able to dedicate 100% of your time to it.

Makes the process of releasing documents and drawings from engineering to production simple and with thorough review.

Can sometimes be easy to miss something that your sign off is optional but expected on.

Very easy to use. Able to bookmark items which you require. Message triggers for approvals and reminders very handy.

Reminders to tasks could be highlighted differently if they are urgent and need attending to. With so many assignments and tasks it is hard to keep track of them.

Search options are very helpful; file associations are useful; BOM redline feature is very useful; being able to bookmark documents and the dashboard are also very useful features

Accessing some functions is neither obvious nor intuitive - for example being able to sign off as a document approver is not easily accessible

The software is well organized, keeps the details simple and records BOMs in an easily accessible place. I like the interface and it makes it easy to audit where approvals came from.

It would be nice if you could automate flows for approval. For instance, I am always trying to send notifications of approval to the same person (PLM manager). I do not see any easy way to make that default when I write an approval

-Web Based so there's no download or software revision to upkeep.
-Everything is exactly where you think it should be. Creating an item? Click items. Looking for a Project? Click Projects. Need to edit users? You guessed it, workplace settings>Users. I know it sounds trivial but I cant tell you how many programs make you jump through hoops.
-Custom everything. During setup you can basically customize in whatever you want.

-Setup is proving to be a real beast. Trying to get a whole company in lockstep is proving to be a hassle because there is so much customization.

The ease with which you find all the documents and the way of navigating

it takes a long time to load documents and switch between pages

Cover most of ISO requirements and connected different parts togeter.

Not enough statistic. Analytics is a good tool, but not enough.