Topic: Arena

Prior to Arena and the advent of cloud, PLM was an expensive gamble. PLM solutions took a long time to implement, and implementations frequently failed. Faced with frightening odds, small and […]

If you’ve ever designed for parts that are non-compliant or approaching end-of-life, you understand the value of accessible and up-to-date component information. But unless you work for an enterprise with access to […]

We know making a product is hard—and that the day-to-day challenges of making hardware products raise a lot of questions. It’s why we’ve dedicated our blog and the resource section of our website to sharing best […]

If you work in a company where document control is responsible for generating and managing internal part numbers, you know it can be a hassle to track down and send over the relevant part documentation each time you […]

Even when you’re knee-deep in design for one project, you might still run across multiple options for a key component or find candidate parts to compare and contrast for future projects.

If you’ve ever designed unavailable or single source parts into your circuit board, you can appreciate the importance of easy access to component information like cost and availability. The last thing you need is to […]

If you make a change to one of the components on a bill of materials (BOM)—say you’ve found a superior component or your current component is going end-of-life—you need to know with complete confidence whether the […]

If you’re part of an organization that’s scaling to production, we’ve got you covered with our scalable cloud PLM solution.

But what if you’re just starting out? You need to capture and document parts, but without […]

If you’ve ever managed an interdisciplinary manufacturing project, you’ll know what I mean when I say each discipline speaks its own language. When you’re dealing with engineers you’re talking CAD and design; when […]

We’re offering something new at Arena—single-user, lightweight BOM management. Let me explain. We’ve come a long way since our early days as BOM.com, and today Arena BOMControl is used by thousands of manufacturers […]

Although a solid change management process is absolutely necessary, it’s easy to fall into an overly complicated, unnecessary or misunderstood engineering change request (ECR) process—especially if your process lacks […]

This is our last blog post of 2011! Happy (almost) New Year! All I have to say is, where did the time go?

The point of purchasing a PLM or PDM system is to simplify and centralize your BOMs and other product data. But once your BOMs, Items, AMLs and associated content exist in a structured format, you are faced with a new […]

Throughout our many years of working with manufacturers and their supply chains, we have developed quite the collection of BOM management resources. Today I wanted to do a bit of a round-up, and share some of our most […]

If you’re in the process of adopting a PLM system (or an ERP or CRM system for that matter) you may be feeling a mix of excitement and apprehension. Getting people to adopt new systems is notoriously difficult, but it […]

Recently, we’ve been taking a new approach to product development at Arena. Traditionally, our main goal in developing new product features was to go-live with well-architected, fully-designed and ready-for-use […]

When it comes to product management, standard processes and theories work 90% of the time, but the last 10% is certainly an art.

I know it’s taken forever, but I finally finished the Arena Solutions Manufacturing Outsourcing Survey report. (Whew!) We talked to 1004 respondents across the high-tech, medical device, consumer products, industrial, […]

As closely as manufacturing and engineering work together, sometimes it feels like they are worlds apart. Engineers are told to design something, manufacturers are told to make something. Engineering opens the design […]

Short answer—“no.” As we wrap up analysis of our Manufacturing Outsourcing Trends Survey, it’s becoming clear that although there are some general commonalities, the specific benefits, challenges and impacts of […]

It’s been a satisfying couple of months for the Arena product team. We went live with the Summer ’11 release of our core application. We launched several new applications including Arena PartSaver, Arena PDXViewer and […]

I just read Oleg Shilovitsky’s Beyond PLM article discussing cloud BOM and change management solutions, and whether they will ever be accepted as a safe and reliable choice for manufacturers.  As Vice President of […]

One of the best parts of working at Arena is supporting the people who bring some of the world’s most innovative products to market.

If you are a small to mid-size manufacturer, it’s probably safe to assume that you outsource some or all of your manufacturing. But “outsourcing” is a very broad term that means different things to different people. […]

I am excited to announce the launch of Arena PDXViewer—a free web app for viewing PDX files exported from any PLM, PDM or other business system. (Check it out here.) Arena PDXViewer gives manufacturers and their […]

Using an ERP system to manage constantly changing BOMs during product design is a common trap that many organizations fall into. Although ERP systems shine as transactional tools that manage inventory and provide […]

What can make or break a manufacturing company? According to Eric Larkin, co-founder and CTO of Arena Solutions, the answer is “how well it handles its product data.” In the early 1990s, as CTO of an underwater video […]

A prevailing attitude among organizations that are reluctant to change is: “That’s the way we’ve been doing it for years and it works just fine!” For many manufacturers, when it comes to their product data management […]

Manufacturers around the world rely on Excel for managing their bills of materials (BOMs) and other product data. From working with many of these companies, we’ve learned a lot about how to get the most out of using […]

Most Arena customers make the move to Arena from Excel. In other words, they manage their bills of materials (BOMs) in Excel until they start managing their BOMs in Arena. We help these companies get their data into […]

We recently posted a new article on our website that has a number of useful suggestions for companies that use Excel to manage their bills of materials (BOMs). Following these recommendations will set you up for a […]

Just a quick note to Arena users out there to make sure you know that the Spring ’10 release of Arena is scheduled to go live on April 11. Spring ’10 gives Arena a new look, and Arena users can get a sneak peek today […]

If you’re like me, this holiday season you spent a lot of time at parties answering the inevitable “so what do you do?” question. Here at Arena we make a software tool for collaboratively managing BOMs and changes and […]