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3 Essential Tips for BOM Control
Getting a product built right the first time so you can ship on time and within budget is no small feat. But, by establishing and maintaining control over your bill of materials you can ensure that you’ll meet your product cost and delivery targets — every time. We’ll show you how in this whitepaper.
3 Essential Tips for Effective Change Management
Controlling changes to your product data is essential to preventing manufacturing disasters like scrap, rework and product recalls. Using spreadsheets, email and other ad-hoc methods to control product changes exposes your product and your company to significant risk. This whitepaper describes how you can control product changes cost effectively to avoid embarrassing and expensive manufacturing disasters.
3 Tips for Effective Product Revision Control and Communication
In this whitepaper we describe how controlling product data, ensuring all changes are documented and communicate the correct product data to internal and external partners, and having an effective system in place for revision control helps companies bring new products to market without missed ship dates and cost targets.
Products are the heart of a manufacturing firm and the value that keeps customers coming back for more. Parts are the heart of a product, and their influence on a final product costs is huge. In many companies, though, parts are the most poorly controlled data in the organization.
5 Steps to Scaling Your Business When Your Competition Stumbles
What you know about your business today will help you get ahead, but what you don’t know can cost you time, money and market share. Arena has written a whitepaper to help manufacturing leaders determine how well they and their organization know the condition of their products and business.
5 Tips to Pass Your FDA or ISO Audit with Confidence
An FDA or ISO audit is a necessary and potentially difficult part of doing business for any medical device manufacturer. For startup medical device manufacturers the first audit of your processes can be as nerve-racking as the first time you defended your business plan before venture capitalists, submitted your first 510(k) application, or delivered your product to market. Maybe more so, because you know that finding yourself on the FDA watch list could frighten away potential customers and investors, and perhaps severely handicap your hard work and company goals.
Companies are run on people, processes and tools. Adding new tools into the mix means a change in the way people work and the way the business is run. Taking a step-by-step approach and getting buy-in from all stakeholders when putting a new tool in place will help ensure a smooth, successful implementation. Implementing product lifecycle management (PLM) is no different. This article provides six tips for manufacturers that are considering using a PLM software system or are ready to move forward with a PLM implementation.
Companies need to be able to adapt quickly in today’s constantly changing environment, and often that means making changes to their products. Engineers make modifications during development and production with the intent of adding functionality, improving manufacturing performance or addressing the availability of a particular part. To make sure proposed changes are appropriately reviewed, a solid process is critical—especially if members of your product team are scattered across multiple locations (for instance, design engineers in Boston, the manufacturing team in St. Louis and component manufacturers all over the world). At the heart of a solid change process is the engineering change order.
AberdeenGroup: PLM in Electronics - Turning Products into Profits
AberdeenGroup: PLM in Electronics - Turning Products into Profits
AberdeenGroup research shows that electronics companies’ products are becoming increasingly complex, engineers struggle to access accurate product data when they need it most. Despite this difficulty, Best in Class companies hit their business goals at an 86% average or better. This report serves as a guide for electronics companies who wish to achieve similar business performance.
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AberdeenGroup: Profitable Product Development for SME
AberdeenGroup: Profitable Product Development for SME
AberdeenGroup research reports that Best in Class companies deliver products to market an average of 22 percent faster than their competition. These Best in Class SMEs are over 50 percent more likely to leverage centralized product data to improve product development performance and profitability.
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AberdeenGroup: The PLM for Small to Medium-Size Manufacturers Benchmark Report
AberdeenGroup: The PLM for Small to Medium-Size Manufacturers Benchmark Report
AberdeenGroup benchmark research shows that many SMEs are responding to the product innovation challenge by proactively focusing on product-related processes by planning for PLM (product lifecycle management) solutions.
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AberdeenGroup: The Product Innovation Agenda Benchmark Report
AberdeenGroup: The Product Innovation Agenda Benchmark Report
AberdeenGroup benchmark research shows that many SMEs are improving product revenue, decreasing product costs, and reducing product development costs by improving product innovation processes.
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AberdeenGroup: The Roles of ERP & PLM in the Product Lifecycle
AberdeenGroup: The Roles of ERP & PLM in the Product Lifecycle
Aberdeen research shows that developing innovative products is a top priority for manufacturers today. Companies have turned away from cost cutting as their primary approach to improving profitability, and are now embracing a strategy of profitable growth.
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Air International
“In less than a week, AIUS employees were exploring the full Arena feature set and sharing the latest BOMs with their contract manufacturers—all at no cost to any of the suppliers.”
Align Technology
“Arena provides Align with all the functionality we need to streamline critical data management processes and manage compliance so our personnel have vital product information at their fingertips. We have been able to significantly reduce our operational costs while improving productivity. And Arena provides a scalable solution that grows with our business without us having to grow our IT department to support it.”
Arena Advanced File Management
Download this datasheet to begin learning how Arena replaces ad-hoc and paper-based document control with a secure, centralized document repository and user-based access controls.
Product data management systems (PDM) and Arena should be used together to control product designs from initial concept into final manufacturing. PDM systems, also called CAD vaults, help mechanical engineers store their CAD files and manage the complex file relationships, while Arena allows entire companies to manage their product lines through an accessible bill of materials (BOM) and change management system. Both systems are necessary for proper control over the entire product development cycle.
Arena EDA Adapter
Arena EDA Adapter
The Arena EDA Adapter makes it easy to push changes directly from Arena to EDA and eCAD tools. See how this integration can help your engineers and designers.
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Arena Product Overview
Arena Product Overview
Arena offers collaborative BOM and change management and makes it easy to share product data with your manufacturing partners and suppliers. See a demonstration of some of its core features.
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Arena-Expandable ERP Integration
Integrating Arena with Expandable ERP ensures accurate propagation of approved product changes to all departments that use Expandable, including materials planning and manufacturing.
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Arena-INFOR® ERP LN™ ERP Integration
This datasheet explains how Arena integrates with the Infor ERP LN ERP systems and reviews the capabilities and benefits of this turnkey solution.
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Arena-Microsoft Dynamics® ERP Integration
Arena-Microsoft Dynamics ERP Integration reconciles the changes you make to your product data in Arena with three of the Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems: AX, GP and NAV — accurately, securely, and on your schedule.
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Arena-NetSuite Integration
The Arena-NetSuite Integration automates the process of transferring current product data from Arena to NetSuite, avoiding manual entry errors and ensuring that NetSuite is always up to date.
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Arena EDA Adapter for OrCAD® Capture CIS®
Arena-Oracle ERP Integration reconciles the changes you make to your product data in Arena with Oracle ERP—accurately, securely, and on your schedule.
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Arena-QAD MFG/PRO™ Integration
This datasheet explains how Arena integrates with the QAD MFG/PRO ERP system and reviews the capabilities and benefits of this turnkey solution.
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Arena-SAGE MAS90™ / MAS200™ Integration
This datasheet explains how Arena integrates with the SAGE MAS90/MAS200 ERP systems and reviews the capabilities and benefits of this turnkey solution.
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Arena-SolidWorks Integration
Arena-SolidWorks Integration
The Arena-SolidWorks integration eliminates manual, time-consuming and error-prone data entry, allowing your engineers to be engineers. Watch an overview of how to search, link and publish to Arena without leaving SolidWorks.
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Arena-SolidWorks Integration
The Arena-SolidWorks Integration eliminates manual, time consuming and error-prone data entry—and lets
your engineers be engineers.
Arena Compliance Management
Arena provides an instant on, scalable compliance management solution that enables you to attain compliance quickly and easily with RoHS, WEEE, UL, CE, FCC, VCCI and other environmental, industry and safety regulations. With Arena, you can define, apply, track, and report on compliance requirements to avoid costly errors, unnecessary time-to-market delays, and lost revenue.
Arena EDA Adapter for Altium Designer
Arena EDA Adapter for Altium Designer brings Arena’s centralized product data to your engineer’s schematic design tool, so engineers can make better design decisions, maximize reuse of preferred company parts, accelerate design completion, and easily generate manufacturing-ready bills of materials (BOMs).
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Arena EDA Adapter for DxDatabook®
This datasheet provides an explanation of the Arena integration with DxDataBook for DxDesigner, allowing design engineers to make critical design decisions, maximize part reuse, accelerate design, and produce manufacturing-ready Bills of Materials (BOMs).
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Arena EDA Adapter for OrCAD® Capture CIS®
The Arena OrCAD Capture CIS Integration enables design engineers to quickly and accurately make critical design decisions, maximize reuse of preferred company parts, accelerate design completion, and produce manufacturing-ready Bills of Materials (BOMs).
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Arena for High Tech Manufacturing
This datasheet explains how Arena helps high-tech manufacturers ensure on-time product delivery and meet cost targets and highlights specific features and benefits that are important to high-tech manufacturers.
Arena for the Medical Device Industry
Developing innovative, high-quality products in the medical device industry requires effective design and document controls that adhere to regulatory requirements, such as the FDA’s current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) and 21 CFR Part 11. Arena’s bill of materials and product record management solution helps meet these challenges and improve the efficiency of new product development.
The Arena Guide to Outsourcing: Removing Barriers, Maintaining Boundaries
The Arena Guide to Outsourcing describes a new solution for outsourcing that lets you focus on your product development and work seamlessly with outsourced manufacturers and vendors.
Arena Product Overview
Arena helps companies accelerate time to market, enable collaborative outsourcing partnerships and support compliance requirements. Learn about current manufacturing challenges and how Arena provides solutions that help companies gain a competitive edge.
Arena Project Collaboration
Project Collaboration from Arena Solutions picks up where traditional project management tools leave off. It ties project plans to the product record, so all parties—from OEM employees to their global supply chain partner—can gauge the “domino effect” that results from a delay, a missed deadline, or an unavoidable component change.
Arena Reporting
This datasheet explains Arena Reporting capabilities, how the configurable reporting engine provides comprehensive snapshots of your company’s product data, and trend analysis capabilities.
Arena Request Management
This datasheet provides a detailed description of the Request Management capabilities, its application within a manufacturer’s business and its business benefits.
Arena RoHS Compliance Management
The Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive has far-reaching implications for manufacturers of electrical and electronic products. As of July 1, 2006, manufacturers or “producers” must ensure and monitor the compliance status of each part or material they use in their products.
Arena Security & Availability
By building security into each layer of our application, we are able to offer a level of security beyond a typical client/server installation, and an investment in security greater than any of our customer’s would make individually.
Arena Workspace Archiving
Arena Solutions’ on-demand delivery model is that it automatically provides secure data storage, backup and disaster recovery, eliminating the burden of responsibility for additional RAID storage systems, redundant networks and servers.
Bait and Switch: 3 tips for communicating the right product information to your suppliers every time
This whitepaper tells the story of how one company’s use of Excel to manage parts in their BOM resulted in their hit product suffering high return rates after they ramped up production at a second contract manufacturer. Learn where their part specification went wrong, and how to keep something like this from happening to you.
Beyond BOM 101: Next Generation Bill of Materials Management
Beyond BOM 101: Next Generation Bill of Materials Management
In the world of hardware development and manufacturing, the bill of materials (BOM) is a critical product information record for both the engineering and manufacturing teams. Learn how modern bill of materials (BOM) solutions can help companies effectively manage and communicate product information and succeed in highly competitive environments.
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Beyond Colored Folders and Spreadsheets: Maintaining the Device Master Record
Medical device manufacturers face unique obstacles in effectively managing and securely sharing their product information. This whitepaper gives insight into how automated, electronic solutions can help medical device companies better manage their device master record (DMR), design history file (DHF) and change orders.
BOM Views & Redlining
Centralize and redline BOMs, and offer multiple views into them to give everyone the details they need.
Change Management
Automate and control the change process, and accelerate ECO cycle times.
Collaborative Tools for Product Development: A New Approach
Collaboration is promised as a benefit of many product development tools, but most fall short. This Arena whitepaper, Collaborative Tools for Product Development: A New Approach, defines a vision for collaboration in product development and explains how Arena fulfills it.
Complete Product BOM
Capture complete BOMs, including mechanical & electrical assemblies, software, packaging and more.
Contract Manufacturing for Small- to Mid-Size Companies: Summary Findings of the Arena Solutions and Symphony Consulting Joint Study
Contract Manufacturing for Small- to Mid-Size Companies: Summary Findings of the Arena Solutions and Symphony Consulting Joint Study
Arena Solutions and Symphony Consulting conducted a survey with over 650 participants on the challenges of contract manufacturing faced by small and mid-Size companies. This report summarizes the key findings
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Documenting RoHS Compliance: 7 Tips from the Field
Documenting RoHS Compliance: 7 Tips from the Field
With the European Union’s (EU) Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive set to take effect on July 1, 2006, manufacturers (or “producers”) who ship to Europe must ensure their products are fully RoHS-compliant-that is, that they don’t exceed maximum concentration levels of certain hazardous substances.
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End-to-End Change Management
End-to-End Change Management
Arena offers an end-to-end solution for managing change across the entire supply chain. See a demonstration of the process from start to finish.
Premium Content - Learn More Premium Content - Watch NowThe engineering change process begins when a customer, manufacturing partner or internal employee raises an issue or problem with a product. Manufacturing, operations, engineering and others discuss the problem and determine what action (if any) should be taken. Once the group members agree that a change is necessary, they must agree upon a solution and then drive the implementation.
Engineering Change Request Form - Capture Problems & Proposed Solutions
An engineering change request (ECR) form is used to describe a suggested enhancement or problem with a product. The form initiates the change process — it promotes discussions within the organization to help determine the impact of a change and the best possible solution. The ECR form is circulated and reviewed among key stakeholders. It is the predecessor for an engineering change order (ECO), which describes the details of a change and may specify how a change should be implemented.
One of the key steps manufacturers can take to grow their business is knowing their supply chain inside and out. This article focuses on the how manufacturers can strengthen their supply chain relationships and improve the efficiency in getting their product manufactured.
Estimating Product Costs During Development
Accurate whole-product cost information during development is critical for effective product planning, yet many organizations struggle with outdated tools that fail to provide timely cost estimates. This paper evaluates current solutions for managing cost data and compares them across several quantitative and qualitative criteria.
Everything Goes Boom: 3 tips for a complete AND correct BOM
This whitepaper tells the story of how one company’s uncontrolled BOM left them with a pile of scrap and a delayed launch. Learn how to take control of your bill of materials and prevent something like this from happening to you.
Examples of Bill of Materials in Excel and in Arena
Manufacturers rely on the information that is included in the bill of materials (BOM) to build a product. The bill of materials typically includes part names, part numbers, part revisions and the quantities required to build an assembly. Thorough BOMs can also include more descriptive information too, for example, the unit of measure for items that need to be cut to length or used by volume, procurement type to indicate if the parts are purchased or made, and level to indicate which subassembly contains which part. BOMs that have printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) contain a column for listing reference designators as well.
Exit Strategies: Ten Ways to Organize Your Data for Moving Out of Excel
When you’re trying to get your product to market, the last thing you need is to deal with the uncertainty Excel brings, including duplicated part numbers and uncontrolled spreadsheets that lead to incorrect product runs. In this whitepaper we examine one company’s situation and learn how Excel was holding them back and the steps they took to transition to a dedicated BOM management system.
The phrase form fit function, also referred to as F3, is used in manufacturing to describe the identifying characteristics of a part (a single component that goes into the final build of your product, typically kept on an item master).
Many engineering document management software solutions on the market today are geared toward specific industries and company sizes. Arena is suited for small to mid-size manufacturers; high-tech electronic creators, medical device makers, clean technology companies and more.
Improving Time to Market
While the definition of time to market (TTM) can vary depending on the company and product complexity, for the purpose of this article we are going to define time to market as the period of time from when a product idea has general agreement and resources are committed to the project, to when the final product is built and out the door to a customer. There are many complex steps in between where something can go awry and make accurately predicting your time to market seem impossible.
The engineering BOM is often organized by engineers based on the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) or Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools used. And for any given product design more than one EBOM may be created. For example, the BOM for the Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) designed by an electric engineer lists the resistors, capacitors and chips. The BOM for the product as designed by a mechanical engineer includes custom parts and purchased hardware like an lcd, buttons, and screws. While multiple EBOMs may exist, the engineering BOM is not the only type of bill of material, there is the manufacturing BOM or MBOM that differs from the EBOM in structure and depth.
Item Specification
Manage part definitions to lower cost of goods sold (COGS) and improve product quality.
Lost in the Woods: The 3 things you should do to prevent revision control failures
This whitepaper shares one company’s struggle with revision control and communication that ends with their new product missing its high-profile launch. We will walk through the root causes, and 3 things you need to do to prevent this from happening to your company.
The manufacturing bill of materials, also referred to as the manufacturing BOM or MBOM, contains all the parts and assemblies required to build a complete and shippable product. This includes packaging materials like colored boxes, CDs and printed quickstart guides. It also incorporates items that are used in the assembly process, like liquid adhesives or tape. Both off-the-shelf (OTS) components and custom, made-to-specification (MTS) parts belong on a manufacturing bill of materials, as well as non-tangible items like firmware. Any item that can be found in the final boxed product needs to be included at some level of the manufacturing BOM.
Arena enables manufacturers to ensure RoHS compliance through its compliance management features. Bundled with a set of RoHS templates and a training workspace, Arena enables companies to ramp up quickly and effectively.
Manufacturing Outsourcing: 7 Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Through our years of experience in working with electronics OEMs and CMs, we have observed 7 common pitfalls that impact manufacturing outsourcing success. In this whitepaper, we will offer insight on these 7 common mistakes and steps that can be taken to address them.
Manufacturing Outsourcing for Small and Mid-Size Companies: 10 Key Challenges and How to Address Them
Small and mid-size companies must pursue outsourcing with more planning, preparation, analysis, and due diligence than larger companies. This whitepaper examines 10 key challenges that smaller companies may face when outsourcing their manufacturing — and potential solutions for how to successfully address those challenges.
Manufacturing Outsourcing: Summary Findings for the Arena Solutions/Symphony Consulting Study
Manufacturing Outsourcing: Summary Findings for the Arena Solutions/Symphony Consulting Study
Arena Solutions and Symphony Consulting conducted a study with over 800 participants, predominately senior executives and subject matter experts, on the challenges of manufacturing outsourcing — and best practices for addressing them. This paper summarizes some of the key findings
Premium Content - Learn More Premium Content - Download PDFMedical device manufacturers are heavily regulated organizations and rightly so. Manufacturing a potentially life-saving device should not be taken lightly. It can take years to get a product to market given the required research, development and rigorous testing that takes place. This article addresses how medical device manufacturers can leverage electronic systems to document and control the product information generated during the entire development process, culminating in successful verification and validation.
Moving From Paper to Electronic Change Management: Five Key Issues to Consider as Your Company Addresses 21 CFR Part 11
It is possible to achieve 21 CFR Part 11 compliance while quickly and easily implementing an electronic change management system. This whitepaper from Arena Solutions provides guidelines for meeting FDA regulations as you move from a paper based system to an electronic system.
Narragansett Imaging
“To get something as powerful as Arena and start controlling our documents without trouble is a huge benefit for a company our size with limited resources.”
New Product Development Steps & How to Address NPD Challenges
To create the next product in a company’s product line a design team goes through product development process steps. Starting with a product idea, the team moves through several stages to generate all the details and documents needed to get the product built. A NEW product development (NPD) process goes through the same steps, however as this product has not been developed by the team before, new risks and uncertainties are introduced and often additional information is documented and shared with manufacturing.
New Product Introduction: Challenges & Solutions —A significant majority of today’s mid-market manufacturers are dissatisfied with the existing tools and current infrastructure available for managing product-related projects. The shortcomings seriously impact their ability to launch new products on time and on budget as this study revealed. This paper summarizes some of the key findings
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New Product Introduction Challenges & Solutions
New Product Introduction Challenges & Solutions
In today’s competitive global market, innovative products are not enough. Companies must radically rethink the way new product introductions are managed in order to accelerate time to market, reduce product cost, and adhere to increasingly stringent environmental and regulatory requirements.
Premium Content - Learn More Premium Content - Download PDFWhether it’s a new product development (NPD) process or new product introduction (NPI) to market, companies must constantly look for ways to optimize product change projects and processes for time, cost, and quality.
Novare Surgical Systems
“With Arena as a central repository for all of our data, our suppliers will find what they need—when they need it. Change orders that take up to a month now can be approved in a week or less. Ultimately, Arena will greatly improve our time to market.”
Opnext
“Arena has made it easier to involve our contract manufacturer earlier in the design process, making the new product introduction process a lot faster.”
Manufacturing a product means you have parts – anywhere from just a few to hundreds, perhaps even thousands, to manage, track and store. Part numbering provides a standard way to reference parts. Manufacturers use part numbering schemes to assign a unique number to each part.
Pixel Velocity
“With Arena, we communicate design information more easily, make bid packages more accurately and make changes more quickly. Arena has helped us improve our processes and make fewer mistakes. I give it credit for helping us make production parts right from the get-go.”
Product Change Management: Three Challenges, Five Fixes
Product Change Management: Three Challenges, Five Fixes
There’s no need to settle for inefficient, frustrating product change management. This whitepaper outlines three product change management realities you need to understand, five fixes to rescue your change process and one strong solution.
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Project Collaboration
Project Collaboration
Project Collaboration adds an analytics layer that enables manufacturers to answer mission-critical questions like “When will my product ship?” Watch the functionality in action.
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Revision Control
Manage part, assembly and product revisions to meet deadlines and prevent costly errors like scrap and rework.
RoHS Compliance
Arena enables manufacturers to ensure RoHS compliance through its compliance management features. Bundled with a set of RoHS templates and a training workspace, Arena enables companies to ramp up quickly and effectively.
Ruckus Wireless
“Arena is a great application for managing our bill of materials and engineering changes. And we’re able to customize so many different departments can use the software to meet their needs. For example, we now put all of our industry and country certifications into Arena, so our salespeople have instant access to them. As we use the software, we continue to uncover more and more valuable functionality.”
Scrap and rework costs are a manufacturing reality impacting organizations across all industries and product lines. Scrap and rework costs are caused by many things—when the wrong parts are ordered, when engineering changes aren’t effectively communicated or when designs aren’t properly executed on the manufacturing line. No matter why scrap and rework occurs, its impact on an organization is always the same—wasted time and money.
SemEquip, Inc.
“Arena is serving us well. There’s no question that using the right technology levels the playing field for us. This type of control becomes a check-box item and allows us to focus on the benefits of our highly educated team and advanced technology.”
Starting Up Without a Wipe Out: 4 tips to sharing your product data without losing control
When unexpected things happen and your product data isn’t well documented, you may miss more than just your ship date. Download this whitepaper to learn how to better control your product data and watch a short video on how Arena helps you collaborate without losing control.
Strida
“Arena enabled us to get a brilliant new product to market in less time and with fewer mistakes and miscommunications than anyone thought possible.”
Supplier Collaboration
Share product data with the supply chain, and include manufacturing partners in the change process.
Surviving a Single Point of Failure: Ten Tips on How to Get By When You’re Relying on Excel
Many companies rely on Excel to manage their critical product data like bills of materials, supplier information and purchasing data; a decision that may be limiting the ability to thrive — or even survive. In part two of our Excel series we outline 10 tips for using Excel in the best way possible to avoid risks.
Three Steps to Cost Control: Addressing the Root Cause of Unexpected Product Costs
Many companies continue to rely on outdated processes and “free” tools like spreadsheets to manage their product information. These may seem like money-saving shortcuts but often end up being costly and time-consuming. The paper explains how a dedicated bill of materials (BOM) management system can help prevent unexpected costs and provides 3 essential steps to get your processes and systems in order.
For small to mid-size manufacturers, a well constructed manufacturing process that maximizes the capabilities of your tools, parts and available labor is an essential part of an efficient go-to-market strategy.
In manufacturing, it costs a lot more to fix problems caused by poor part documentation than it does to document product parts properly the first time. Realizing that your product contains parts that have procurement challenges or functional limitations is a misstep no manufacturer can afford. Even more painful is realizing these problems could have been avoided with proper documentation.
Transition to RoHS: The Seven Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Transition to RoHS: The Seven Common Pitfalls to Avoid
When it comes to the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive, good things do not come to those who wait. This directive, which severely limits the use of six hazardous substances — most notably, lead (Pb) — in products shipped to the European Union (EU), is set to take effect in July 2006. Similar requirements will take shape in China, Taiwan, Japan, and other countries in the near future.
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Turning Great Designs Into Great Products: The Changing World of Mechanical Design
Arena Solutions has worked with companies across diverse industries to improve their product development and manufacturing processes. Through years of working with customers, Arena understands the daily challenges companies face in effectively turning designs to products. In this paper we hope to shed some light on this very important topic.
Up in Smoke: The 3 things you need to know about managing product changes
Up in Smoke: The 3 things you need to know about managing product changes
This whitepaper tells the story of one company’s struggle with paper based processes that ended with their hit product being recalled, what caused it, and how to keep something like this from happening to you.
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Upgrading to Electronic Records Management: Four Ways Medical Device Companies can Implement a System Smoothly
This whitepaper outlines how an electronic records management system can help medical device companies manage their design history files, device master records, test reports, and more. It continues with key steps companies must take as they select and put an electronics records management system in place.
Most small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) start with their product bill of materials (BOM) in Excel spreadsheets — why should you be any different? Excel is a well-known, flexible application that everyone has — It’s easy and it’s essentially free. Small companies can make it through the first release of a new product just fine using Excel. But when companies release more products, grow internally or add more manufacturing and outsourcing partners, the act of managing an Excel bill of materials becomes much bigger and more complex. Those seemingly simple problems can impact you in big ways when you least expect it. But there is another way — you don’t have to use Excel spreadsheets to manage your bills of materials.
Western Electronics
“Using Arena, we can be more confident that we’ve got an accurate history, the latest revisions and the right documentation.”
What is Product Lifecycle Management?
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) encompasses the people, processes and tools used to manage a product and its associated information from concept to end of life. Throughout the stages of PLM, product data is generated and distributed to stakeholders within and outside of an organization. Within the organization, these stakeholders typically represent engineering, operations, procurement, manufacturing, document control, quality, regulatory, marketing and others. External stakeholders include a company’s suppliers, contract manufacturers and design partners.
Whose BOM is it Anyway? 3 Tips for Taking Control of Your Bill of Materials
Whose BOM is it Anyway? 3 Tips for Taking Control of Your Bill of Materials
This whitepaper tells the story of how one company’s uncontrolled BOM left them with a pile of scrap and a delayed launch. Learn how to take control of your bill of materials and prevent something like this from happening to you.
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The Wrong Job for a Great Tool: The Hidden Costs of Using Excel for BOM Management
Many companies still rely on “free” programs like Excel to manage their product BOMs. This whitepaper outlines some of the hidden costs — such as failed products, missed delivery dates and blown cost targets — and compares Excel with a modern system designed specifically for BOM management.
A successful manufacturing process relies on a manufacturer’s ability to build products in reliable and repeatable ways, so it’s important to make sure that the components used to build and test products are well maintained.
ZENN Motor Company
“Arena gives us the ability to manage a tremendous amount of product information, collaborate with our key suppliers, and comply with industry standards—all with extreme confidence—as we bring our game-changing ZENN vehicles to market.”
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