--- title: Arena PLM & QMS Reviews meta_title: 'Arena PLM & QMS Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 463 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Arena PLM & QMS works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 463 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: CAD & PLM url: https://www.g2.com/categories/cad-plm --- # Arena PLM & QMS Reviews **Vendor:** PTC **Category:** [Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/product-lifecycle-management-plm) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 463 ## About Arena PLM & QMS Arena by PTC is a cloud-native product lifecycle management (PLM) and quality management system (QMS) that unifies product and quality information in a secure, single source of truth. By hosting all electrical, mechanical, and software information in a centralized product record, Arena enables every participant throughout the entire product lifecycle to work together anytime and anywhere, increasing visibility and traceability. This accelerates new product development (NPD) and new product introduction (NPI) by streamlining processes, automating review cycles, and reducing errors. Arena PLM keeps internal teams and supply chain partners on the same page. Our scalable and collaborative platform streamlines engineering change reviews, simplifies bill of materials (BOM) management and document control, mitigates supply chain risk, and helps speed product launches. Arena QMS connects quality and product record information into a single, secure system. Easily traceable closed-loop quality and product processes help you introduce high-quality products to market while ensuring compliance with quality standards and regulations, such as FDA 21 CFR Part 820, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, ISO 13485, and AS 9100. Arena Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) provides real-time electronic component risk and compliance information to reduce supply chain risk throughout NPI and NPD. With Arena SCI embedded within Arena PLM, you can proactively monitor the health of your BOM and mitigate component issues throughout the product lifecycle, as well as ensure electronic component compliance as regulatory requirements evolve. Arena’s AI capabilities create smarter, more personalized experiences that empower every customer while adhering to its responsible AI policies. Arena AI Assistant uses a conversational interface to help users navigate Arena with ease and reduce onboarding time, while Arena AI Engine drives faster document reviews and comparisons to further speed workflows. Arena supports more than 1,500 complex high-tech electronics, medical device, and aerospace/defense companies around the world. Using Arena’s proven cloud-native solutions, your internal teams and external partners can leverage the most comprehensive product development platform to accelerate product launches while reducing expenses, increasing profitability, and speeding time to market. ## Arena PLM & QMS Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users find Arena PLM & QMS to be **extremely easy to use** , with quick learning curves and responsive support. (35 reviews) - Users value the **convenient document management** features of Arena PLM & QMS, enhancing organization and efficiency. (17 reviews) - Users value the **secure document control** in Arena PLM & QMS that enhances team collaboration and compliance. (12 reviews) - Users highlight the **intuitive interface** of Arena PLM & QMS, making it easy to navigate for everyone. (11 reviews) - Users value the **responsive customer support** of Arena PLM & QMS, consistently receiving timely assistance with concerns. (9 reviews) - Product Lifecycle Management (9 reviews) - Users praise the **user-friendly interface** of Arena PLM & QMS, highlighting seamless integration and great support during migration. (9 reviews) - Users value the **easy navigation** of Arena PLM & QMS, making it simple to find what they need. (8 reviews) - Tracking Efficiency (8 reviews) - BOM Management (7 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users feel frustrated by **feature limitations** , needing better ERP integration and enhancements for improved usability and tracking. (10 reviews) - Users find Arena PLM & QMS lacking in **essential features** , such as multi-item search and improved template creation. (10 reviews) - Users struggle with **ineffective search functionality** and difficulties in maintaining data consistency across the organization. (7 reviews) - Users find the **inefficient searching** in Arena PLM & QMS frustrating, as it limits their ability to locate items easily. (7 reviews) - Users find the **search functionality lacking** , struggling to locate multiple items or documents effectively within Arena PLM & QMS. (7 reviews) - Users find the **search functionality lacking** , making it difficult to locate documents and required information efficiently. (7 reviews) - Users find the **difficult usability** of Arena PLM & QMS challenging, requiring time to adapt and implement effectively. (6 reviews) - Users note a **steep learning curve** with Arena PLM & QMS, particularly for new users transitioning from other systems. (6 reviews) - Users face **limited functionality** for tracking production and implementation, necessitating additional software for effective management. (6 reviews) - Users find the **non-intuitive interface** of Arena PLM & QMS increases complexity and slows down processes significantly. (6 reviews) ## Arena PLM & QMS Reviews ### 1. Easy to Navigate **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** It is fairly easy to search for things, once you learn how to navigate the platform. The user interface is pretty clear, without too much or too little to be distracting or confusing. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** It is sometimes difficult to pull reports. I think the reports feature could be improved to make it easier to download specific reports, or to pull very specific criteria. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Have someone who is able to teach you how to use it, then once you learn, it's very easy. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** A huge part of my job is data extrapolation, so I use arena to review several different facets of the Quality Department. I am able to find all the information that I need, download the reports to Excel, and have all my data at my fingertips within minutes. ### 2. Overall Good System **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The system has a lot of versatility and applications that are already built into Arena, so you don't have to start from scratch on every single process. The Arena staff are also very helpful with any questions. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** It is a lot of information to digest at one time, and it is not always intuitive where things are stored or how to access them. It's also not intuitive how the processes or templates work. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Provide tutorials for processes already available through Arena **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have some internal quality processes that we want to move to Arena templates for record-keeping and better organization intra-department and inter-department. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your review of Arena and for sharing your experience. We're happy to learn about your positive experience with support and the capabilities Arena offers and thanks for the suggestions on tutorials. ### 3. Efficient software for your product release needs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Business Supplies and Equipment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 03, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The ability to effectively create parts, BOMs and link everything to suppliers without repetition. You can upload drawings too which helps suppliers to be aware of a part without asking for further assistance. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Sometimes the menus can be clunky and it does take a while to learn your way around the platform. This does get easier with time but it is a bit of a learning curve. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our organisation has become a lot more streamlined thanks to Arena's platform. Multiple departments are able to benefit from the information gathered on there and can quickly get the information they require. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your review of Arena. We value your input and are glad your organization is able to benefit through streamlined processes. If you need additional training, please reach out to your customer success coach or consider one of our online classes. ### 4. The pros and cons of using Arena PLM **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** You can customize the fields to your needs and implement custom settings providing an experience that is suitable for your needs. I also like the fact that I can easily search and sort documents - Things don't get lost. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** The query response/screen transition time is measured in seconds. When you need to toggle between many screens or perform complex operations it is a bit slow. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are managing all of our official documents in Arena. This allowed us to achieve a clear approval process and document traceability that is paramount in medical applications. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your review of Arena and for sharing the pros and cons. We're happy to learn you've been able to achieve the approval process and document traceability required for the medical device industry. ### 5. One of the top new emerging PLM in industries **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 04, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Arena PLM is web based cloud platform. So no need of external application to install and use. It has very simple, easy to use interface. It helps to maintain and manage data very efficiently. It helps to work effectively collaborating with different teams **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Though it has simple interface to use, some of attributes and functions are little bit complex. It involves multiple steps to process. Processing bulk changes is time consuming. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps to maintain and manage the product lifecycle. Also helps to manage supplier information. QMS helps in management of quality issues, reports n actions. Thus combinedly it helps company to make product development easy and reaching to market faster. ### 6. Very manual process. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Moya A. | System Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 25, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** it's reliable. Service is never down. Nothing else really. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Very manual. Software should auto-create a Placeholder, and auto-create Change Orders when a new PT or DD is created. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Electronic signatures/approvals ### 7. Highly customizable PLM software with a slow often clunky UI. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** How customizable it is, there are virtually infinite configurations you can have to make Arena most effective for your company's needs. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** How slow all of the loading times are. I understand it is a database and there is lots of data it is handling with each query. However, uploading new files or updating old files is a slow and tedious process. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Version control with our projects. Also, having a single source of truth that we can reference both internally and provide to external partners or contractors as needed. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your review. We're sorry to hear your loading times are slow. I recommend reaching out to your customer success coach to review your issue and see how to address it. ### 8. Extremely powerful business software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James P. | Senior Mechanical Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** What I like best about Arena is it is very easy to use and search items in the archive. Arena is very well organized and easy for new users to get up to speed on how to pull part numbers and save files. The BOM structure handling is very well setup in this system. I also like how all files are dependent on each other when they are linked in a bill of materials structure, and can't add or remove components without updating this structure, so it forces everyone to take their time when making changes to released parts. I also like the ability to search older changes and mine data. That greatly helps me to determine if parts come in that were made wrong, I can go back and look to see why we made each change in the past so that we dont accept parts that will not function properly. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** There aren't that many things that I don't like. The one main thing for me is the search option sometimes doesn't bring up everything in the system, especially when searching for explicit things, for example for us, when I search fasteners in our system, for some reason I always miss something that is in there and end up creating a new part number for fasteners that already exist in our system. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** The advice I have is that you aren't going to find a software that is better than this. I have been in engineering for a long time, and have managed a post-market engineering department in the medical device industry, and I really wish we would have had Arena at that site, because this is so much easier to use than what we had there. The other PLM software that is out there has no comparison to Arena, it is like comparing microsoft paint to solidworks for 3d modeling. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** There are multiple benefits that we are seeing now that we have this software. One major benefit is the ability to keep all of our data in one place globally. I can go in and look at drawings and pull parts from other sites, and easily work remotely on other projects that are in other countries. The other benefit is archiving all of the changes that we have had in the past, and the structure of those changes that forces the user to input why they are changing the part so that this data can be mined in the future to avoid wasted time so that engineers can learn from mistakes and build upon designs. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Hi James, thank you for taking the time to share such a detailed review and all the benefits you are realizing from using Arena! Also, please reach out to your customer success coach for tips on searching. They're always happy to help. ### 9. My Experience with Arena as a QMS is the best one Ive used so far. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samuel D. | Facility Designer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** I like Arena because of the interface. I think the design is lightyears ahead of ETQ Reliance. ETQ Reliance was made by developers who have never used their own product where every text entry and workflow was counter-intuitive; You couldn't even have multiple tabs open. Here in Arena, Everything is made straightforward. It is easy to navigate and changes are easy to make. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Some things could be improved, such as the permissions. I've ran into a few cases where I've edited "in production" revisions, and there is no way to revert the changes done if changes were made by accident. One thing I would like to see is making batch edits where multiple items can be edited at one time. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** I would highly suggest this service due to the easy navigation and clean user interface. You can tell that the designers have put a lot of effort into making it very user friendly. Again, I have used ETQ reliance at another company and it was like working with hand tied behind my back. Nothing, that program was about made any sense. The fact that you cant have multiple browser tabs open, the fact that you couldnt select text. Arena is a breathe of fresh air, and according to coworkers, its what all the big successful companies use. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** The business problems that we are solving revolve around product verification. The benefits are the facts that we can easily upload required documents in batches. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Samuel, Thank you for your five-star review of Aren QMS! We value your feedback and experience. ### 10. Arena in the workspace **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thore R. | Intern, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Our help team that consisted of Frank Farls and Mitch Mitchell was amazing. Always ready to help me with any small issue and look for solutions to my problems. Also I like how intuitive Arena is. It looks good and has a lot of helpful functions. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** There is little modality. If there is a feature that I would like but doesnt exist for me, then it most likely wont, because everyone uses the same arena. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Look into its features and make sure it fits your needs. Very good for smaller firms that dont have the capacity to have their own servers or PLM team. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Setting up our BOM in an easy to follow sheet. Previously we had our BOM in excel and it was always hard to keep track of everything. The BOM view and item information you can add is extremely helpful. ### 11. Ease of Use and Utility **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Logical, and easy to use, with self expl **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Generic Download BOM Options without all of the extraneous **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Ease of use and value for the purpose. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** External Access to latest Documentation by our suppliers. ### 12. Learning Arena as an intern **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thore R. | Manufacturing Intern, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** I like how much help information there is at your disposal once your an arena member. The tips&tricks videos have been extremely helpful, just as our arena contact people who have been great teachers. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Some of the functions are a little hidden or confusing to understand when trying them the first couple of times. Editing values & categories took me forever to find the first time. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Definitely go for it if you are looking for a way to better organize important files and BOM systems. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a small startup, we are still struggling a little bit in setting up our systems and making sure everyone has access to the same information. Regarding our BOM, Arena was the perfect fix for our situation. We went from a kind of rough Excel sheet to a beautiful BOM in Arena. ### 13. Very easy to use and pretty straight forward with layout **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 16, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Its very simple and the flow of its works really well. Iam able to access it very easy and looking up instructions are very simple. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Logging in is a little bit of a hassle as we get kicked out a lot during use. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** The general structure of the platform works ver well for use especially when we need to look up a lot of different work instructions. ### 14. {"translation":"Please provide the text in the Unknown Language for translation."} **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 20, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Flexibilidad, fácil de crear y conectar las entradas y salidas. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Sometimes the system is too slow. The statistical tool is not user-friendly. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Understand the concept - what is an input and output. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** All information in one place. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your positive review of Arena. We appreciate your feedback. ### 15. Arena review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Goods | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** BOM management is very efficient and easy to use Item entry **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** There are many menu variations that take a while to learn Everything works properly **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Prepare data in advance of implementation **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is getting our engineering BOMs organized. We are saving money by reducing BOM errors ### 16. Awesome PLM software for the current Industry **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** ganesh k. | PLM consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** ease of use more user friendly than other PLM software. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** It should provide less complicated medium to configure CAD tools **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Real time product designing and deliveries which reduced the defects #LEAN ### 17. Effective, all encompassing, user friendly, and great for suppliers/quality/managers/purchasing dept **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 13, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The tabs for items, training, quality, etc are very helpful. I also really like the advanced search tool and how easy it is to locate a document or record (or anything really) with limited information. In a quality department, it is often difficult to make huge records repetitively without making some errors or miss information. Arena makes that easier to locate, update, and access. The employee and supplier accounts are also very easy to manage, which I really appreciate. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Sometimes it is not clear whether an item is still in use or referenced in a training plan/record/document. For example, if you go to an item that a department no longer trains to, it may say under "items" that that training plan is still using it, even if it has been removed from the training plan. That's one bug I've found. I think there should also be more differentiation between the types of items/training plans. Like make separate categories or folders for the individual vs. departmental, or folders for different types of items. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Here is a list of some of the things that we use Arena to optimize at my company: Company changing brand name, making the communication between engineers and manufacturing/distribution optimized and efficient, solving quality processes and keeping documentation and changes logged and current, updating training plans and improving the quality of professional education for employees, records/documents/audits/item histories/purchasing logistics/etc. all use Arena to collaborate with quality and document all functions of the company. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your thorough review of Arena PLM &QMS. We appreciate your input about training and have made enhancements to this feature in recent releases. Thanks for sharing how you use Arena to collaborate across engineering, manufacturing, and quality, and for employee training. ### 18. Great UI **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** PRABHU CHARAN T. | PROCESS DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2022 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Workflow, Agility, user interface, change management systems **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Can add more features like multiple views for engineering and manufacturing boms **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Alignment with current regulations and adaptability to our inter QMS **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Hello Prabhu, Thank you for your review of Arena PLM and QMS. We're glad to hear you're happy with the solution and you noted the great UI. We've been improving the UI in our latest releases so this is good news to hear! ### 19. Behind the times for updates **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Web accessibility is key function for use across departments **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Software is far behind in mobile application support. So many times I need to be able to pull documents at remote sites, and not having an easy-to-navigate Mobile app makes the process much more difficult. It would also be nice to see a cad data plug-in for viewing cad models in the native Arena environment. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** I would only recommend if there is mobile application support as well as native file/CAD viewer tools built into the Arena environment. Without good changes, you might as well go with a fancy Excel sheet and save some money. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Sadly without the CAD integration tools and file preview, the software is nothing more than an expensive file management server. Looking to use the ECO process but will need to get up to speed with capabilities so we are using it correctly. ### 20. Functional for PLM, could use some GUI updates and workflow simplifications **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** I like the links between tickets, items, change orders, and the likes. It makes it easy to keep a detailed history and provides support to look back at descicions, tasks, specs, configurations as questions come up. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** I don't like the interface. The way the site is setup feels clunks as you often view several tabs on a page. Each tab has to load a new "page" instead of the tabs being integrated into each page somehow. This leads to lots of clicking and waiting for pages to load. On many pages to edit the information shown, you have to go to a different tab or page or sub page tab or menu. To do almost any task, you have to dig a few pages down to get to the info or change it. I would advise moving "tabs" onto one page or having options on a page change as you click to edit instead of opening new pages to edit the info. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are solving our configuration management and colaboration issues, as well as issues with losing supporting documents. ### 21. Convenient and easy to coordinate teams across multiple locations **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sam L. | Hardware Engineering Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Straightforward, intuitive interface. As a project manager it allows me to coordinate multiple teams across multiple locations and allows clear communication and approvals for changes to products. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** search response speed could be improved. Responses take a while to appear after the screen loads, which sometimes makes me think that there are no results. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing change, manufacturing QVL's, BOM management and version control. Arena is our single source of truth for production and firmware implementation **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Hi Sam, Thank you for your positive review of Arena. We appreciate your feedback! ### 22. Quick Validations and Surprisingly Flexible Workflows **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Arena is very flexible to customize how you would like without being complicated. A simple admin can create and manage workflows. Since we have documented our workflows, changes are quick to implement. We just verify the changes and boom, we are up and running again. Arena also seems to be willing to work with us to add new features to their releases, which happen often. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Talking to others that use Arena we feel that our implementation specialist did not help us understand the full potential of some of the features available. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We went from paper based QMS to electronic. It's been more efficient and we are getting higher quality records. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your positive review of Arena PLM & QMS. It's always nice to hear from customers who have moved from paper-based QMS to electronic and the improvements they realize. To ensure you're maximizing your investment, reach out to your customer success coach. They're there to help you succeed with Arena! ### 23. It is not as flexible and user friendly as other systems I have used in the past **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Quality processes can be created by the customer. Has a Configuration Management module Has a deviation module. Attributes can be created Easy web based access **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Limitations on customization. Creation of "attributes" is rigid Formating of "final" templates is not user friendly Attributes cannot be used more than once on each section (ie. date, responsible, etc) Reporting is very limited Does not have escalation process when an action is due Licences are expensive **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Quality processes like Non Conforming Material Reports, Corrective Actions Reports, Supplier Corrective Action Reports, 8Ds have been implemented. We tried to use the Document Control module as our solution but found it difficult to fit our business. Using another solution instead. We also tried to link it to NetSuite, but not all the functions can be linked. For example, drawing reviews, material receipts with NCMRs and SCARs and PPMs, supplier scorecards, reports, etc. We were not able to link the scrap tickets to NetSuite inventory management. ### 24. Great PLM Platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** I have used various PLM platforms throughout my career and Arena has been the best in my experience. It is straightforward to navigate without any extensive training. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** From time to time, the platform can be unstable and load a SKU indefinitely, requiring a page refresh. It also forces a re-login every 30 min. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Searching for BOM, drawings, and writing ECR. It offers a very visually clean dashboard. It also has a search function that actually works well. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your 5-star rating of Arena! Happy to hear you've had experience with various PLM systems and you find Arena to be the best. Also, we've made improvements to our UI and search functionality in recent releases so we're glad you noted that in your review. ### 25. UI Update makes experience much better **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** I like having one space to hold all of our documentation. I can find all the company documents in one place and not worry about people holding separate versions. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** - Obsolete items shouldn't show up in regular searches - There is no dynamic forms capability - Word docs don't get loaded as PDF's - Comments and communication on changes are challenging to find. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maintaining consistent documentation across multiple international sites. **Official Response from Cyndi Kuka:** > Thanks for taking the time to share a review. We really appreciate the time you took to communicate the use of Arena within your organization. As you may know, our latest release has provided a significant update to the user interface, providing a clean and focused view that makes navigation easier and highlights critical activities, common actions, and next steps. While the new look does still utilize a tabular format for navigating additional data areas, we believe it improves overall readability and gives weighted importance visually to certain actions or data. We have a commitment to improve user experience and will be providing additional updates to additional operations in the future, so keep an eye out for more communication. I would love to speak with you regarding change comments and communications if you have time, I can be reached at ckuka@arenasolutions.com if you would like to discuss. ### 26. Easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Intuitive to use for users. Covers most of the bases needed as a PLM **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Admin functions can be limited to change or remove some customizations. Our company has a part/supplier quality database that is difficult to cover in Arena. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have custom made parts management databases that are becoming difficult to maintain. A cloud system works for teams around the world without having to be on VPN or corp domains. ### 27. We use Arena for PLM. We are very happy with its performance **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** We love its integration capabilities and the process for change management customization **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Nothing to dislike. We like everything about Arena PLM **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We manage all our product lifecycle in Arena PLM **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your 5-star rating of Arena. We're impressed to learn that you like everything about the product! Thank you for sharing your experience. ### 28. Intuitive system **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Arena QMS is very intuitive and user-friendly for those who are new to navigating QMS systems. There are multiple ways to access items and complete the same task. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Some UI/UX updates to make it more visually pleasing would be nice but not necessary. It isn't clear how to drag and drop Bookmarks for organizing. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I haven't encountered this yet. ### 29. Arena PLM & QMS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ginger B. **Reviewed Date:** November 30, 2020 ### 30. Arena user experience **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The way of neatly organizing stuff in Arena deserves appreciation. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** -The sourcing details can be edited even when the item is in design stage. -No feature available to remove all the supplier access for a deviation at once. -Arena server is a little slow. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Documentation of technical drawings. Easy to use. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your positive review and for sharing your Arena user experience. Please contact your customer success coach about editing sourcing details and removing supplier access for a deviation. They will likely be able to address these points. ### 31. Using Arena for change management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** It's easy to track documentation, change orders, etc. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** The UI is very old-looking, outdated. Definitely needs a revamp. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Arena is a great tool, but make sure your team has the resources and bandwidth to work on implementation of the platform. It requires some serious effort and the learning curve is quite steep. But it definitely pays dividends. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Tracking documentation is great. **Official Response from Gay Groce:** > Thank you for your review. The new UI that was released in Winter Release in January has a an update look and functionality. Arena is always looking for feedback from our customers on how the UI has helped them and what we can do to improve it. ### 32. Arena PLM and QMS seamlessly integrates product related functions. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 17, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Arena PLM provides better visibility of product development in day-to-day work. Integration with the QMS helps implement an organization's QMS policies. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Unavailability of feature to record data electronically rather than uploading forms to maintain organization's quality policy. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Faster time to release products, reduced paperwork, better integration of different product development aspects. ### 33. Very helpful in managing and improving our BOM management. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Easy to navigate through. Changes are easily trackable. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** There is sometimes trouble with having a good overview of products/configurations. Perhaps a visual representation would be more helpful than a list. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Make use of the training space. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are solving & improving BOM errors. Overall quality. Increasing traceability. We are allowing easier expansion of market variants. ### 34. ARENA PLM **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** User friendly not complex and quick implementation process **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** request for new features takes a lot of time to implement if any. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** User friendly not complex and quick implementation process **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Complex Product life cycle management challenges. from a benefits perspective, the ARENA system gives us a complete and overall solution to achieve this. ### 35. Powerful and useful tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** You always have the most updated document and the working revision. In addition, you can customize Arena to your needs and manage Quality processes, approvals, etc.... **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** The graphics and the difficulties in using some part of it **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Items and quality processes management. Collaboration around the world ### 36. I believe there is a steep learning curve but after spending time the interface is intuitive. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The shortcut buttons are handy and make it easy to navigate. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** There is a steep learning curve to the process. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are submitting documents/files to outside suppliers, having everything in one place is convenient. **Official Response from Alaine Portnoy:** > Thank you for your review of Arena. We value our input and are happy to hear you're satisfied with the system and now find it intuitive. If you would like further training or best practices, reach out to your customer success coach or take advantage of one of our online classes. ### 37. A little Buggy **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 04, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The system is a relatively easy platform to use but buggy at times. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** SmartLinks have issues when not properly logged out of various access points. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We enjoy the ability to have controlled document links so that everyone has the most up-to-date files. ### 38. the connection is TRASH. you should not be happy about it. other than that it works pretty good. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** I like the organization of documents the best **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** the slow connection is the worst. sometimes it also doesnt allow me to do something, then i refresh and it does ( and nothing else changed) **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** organization. having organized documents ### 39. Arena is very nice for organizing things **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Linking things to other items is very easy **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Some things like linking documents for certifications are a bit strange. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** It works well. Go for it! **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Developing a product. Helpful for linking information. ### 40. Arena PLM the right solution for small to medium scale firms **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Goods | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** The SaaS solution and complete configuration based system **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** Scalability and customization capabilities can be a limitation at times. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing product data, integration with CAD, Change management, Supplier management ### 41. I greatly enjoy Arena **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alonzo B. | Mechanical Manufacturing Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** It works quite well. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Document management system and process control. We also use the system as a communications tool for suppliers and as a global team. It is also a wonderful resource to have revision control and historical documentation. **Official Response from Gay Groce:** > Thank you for your review. The Arena help is very thorough offers step by step instructions, but you can always reach out to me, your Customer Success Coach for further explanation. You can reach me at ggroce@arenasolutions.com ### 42. A very good document management system. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** Nice bright and organised interface. Very easy to track the version history of documents. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** I think the search function needs to be improved. I can never find the document I want through the search bar. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is helping our company keep track of all our important documents and ensuring nothing gets lost. ### 43. Easy to learn, Quick to use and Effectively links documents. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Don M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 17, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Arena was extremely easy to deploy and implemented on time. The implementation team was a great help and is always there to support when needed. I also find that when sending suggestions for improvements or changes they are super quick to respond, which is great in a fast-paced industry like ours. Arena has been instrumental with many users working from home as information is always available by all at all times. Arena is well suited for document management and building BOMs for products. Organization involvement for approval on certain items is wonderful. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Document control and record retention. We primarily utilize ARENA for part and document management. The main feature of ARENA that makes it an efficient tool is the ability to easily connect related parts. If a new part is generated, it is very easy to build out a BOM and attach all relevant documentation. Arena allows me to maintain engineering drawings at each revision level and quickly go back to view previous versions. **Official Response from Marshall Wood:** > Hello Don, we certainly appreciate your kind words about the Arena product and our team. We've made several improvements to the user interface in recent releases, and we have more planned for the future. In the Winter '21 release, you'll be able to select from many more colors to improve the appeal of the user interface. Improvements are also coming with respect to searching. The Winter '21 release will include a new Quick Search feature that will get the product closer to the kind of searching you describe. Keep watching for more search improvements in the future. Please keep the suggestions coming, and feel free to reach out to me at any time at mwood@arenasolutions.com. ### 44. Getting better, but can be better **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's straight forward for the most part. There is room for improvement ### 45. Arena PLM efficiency **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Erin H. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 21, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** It's nice that Arena is web-based. It is working well for our company and makes our processes more streamlined. Less mistakes are made, and if they are, there's a clear record of them in the documentation. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is nice to be keeping versions locked, so that there is no confusion within the company. It has reduced the amount of verbal and informal communication between the engineers and field service, since they now have a repository of information in Arena that they know is official, up to date, and relevant. **Official Response from Gay Groce:** > "Thank you Erin for the thorough review of Arena. I am glad to hear that you like the improved functionality, especially the file upload UI. There are some best practices that I could help you with, and could improve the use of Arena for you, especially for the list of questions that you asked in your review. Please reach out to me at ggroce@arenasolutions.com and we can spend some time going over each of you questions." ### 46. Mechanical Engineer, using Arena for 1 year **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan T. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 12, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Trim down the features / GUI to what your company absolutely needs. This will eliminate confusion and lower the learning curve. Really emphasize training to ensure the entire organization is equally competent in the utilization of Arena. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arena eliminates the need for physical interaction to manage documents within the quality system. Not only is this essential in the time of a health crisis, it simply speeds up document revision process by allowing everyone access to view and edit documents in real time. ### 47. Overall Good PLM Software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bobby B. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 12, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Works well for BOM and part management and release to vendors **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organization of BOM, parts, assemblies, etc. Release in organized manner to vendors. Manage release with ECR, ECO, SCAR, PRCR, PRCN. ### 48. Best Overall Value for everything PLM **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick C. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2020 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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 **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Arena PLM is a good choice because of the amount of flexibility and customization the system gives you. Attributes for Changes, Items, Quality, and Projects are all highly customizable. Enabling Access Policies is a huge benefit as you can govern what information users have access to. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arena is helping us keep an accurate BOM and track where key items are used across multiple BOMs. The Projects Module is useful for storing key information throughout the Product Development lifecycle. Tracking numerous changes across different product lines is possible with Arena as you can have different types of changes that occur to an item at the same time. ### 49. Overall good experience. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chelsea C. | Research Associate , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Once you get used to Arena, it is a very useful and powerful system. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps organize and group all related quality documents. It is also nice to be able to see all past versions of the documents. It would be nice to have a representative to come out and train all of us on all of the aspects that could be learned. I feel like arena has a lot more to offer than what we are utilizing it for. **Official Response from Gay Groce:** > "Thank you Chelsea for reviewing Arena. Have you tried using the Requests world to collaborate with your team to review documents? This allows you to use the check out/check in feature that you talked about and to capture your team recommendations or issues. The Request also links into the Change world so that you have a closed loop process. If you would like to learn more about how this could work for you please feel free to contact me at ggroce@arenasolutions.com" ### 50. Overall, well-built system that meets all of our industry's needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Will Z. | Prod. Dev. Engr, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 06, 2019 **What do you like best about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **What do you dislike about Arena PLM & QMS?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering Arena PLM & QMS:** Ask for help, the support is always there. Stick with the software through the learning curve, and don't stop learning because there are always new tricks and features you might not have known before. **What problems is Arena PLM & QMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arena helps us meet FDA design controls easily and keep us accounted for to have an updated, official record of everything rather than having uncontrolled updates to files. ## Arena PLM & QMS Discussions - [Is it possible to customize the workflow in the CAPA module?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/30420-is-it-possible-to-customize-the-workflow-in-the-capa-module) - 1 comment, 4 upvotes - [Can this PLM bring the data and drawings straight to the production lines so we can digitize the production lines and remove the paper?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-this-plm-bring-the-data-and-drawings-straight-to-the-production-lines-so-we-can-digitize-the-production-lines-and-remove-the-paper) - 1 comment, 2 upvotes - [Would it be possible for Arena to implement this simple feature?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/would-it-be-possible-for-arena-to-implement-this-simple-feature) - 1 comment, 2 upvotes - [Is Arena PLM more cost-effective than keeping an aging Agile PLM system with limited support?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-arena-plm-more-cost-effective-than-keeping-an-aging-agile-plm-system-with-limited-support) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is the best way to move legacy Agile PLM data (BOMs, suppliers, documents) into Arena Cloud PLM?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-best-way-to-move-legacy-agile-plm-data-boms-suppliers-documents-into-arena-cloud-plm) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Arena PLM & QMS pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/arena-plm-qms/reviews?page=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-04+10%3A25%3A14+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=f1269c1c-5d3f-4ceb-bdd1-d50734d571d0&secure%5Btoken%5D=44c21b6203873c3bf8ace5b212774fda057d6e68ea86d7a982884e8f846b36ac&format=llm_user) ## Arena PLM & QMS Integrations - [Acumatica](https://www.g2.com/products/acumatica/reviews) - [CADTalk](https://www.g2.com/products/cadtalk/reviews) - [Cofactr](https://www.g2.com/products/cofactr/reviews) - [Expandable ERP](https://www.g2.com/products/expandable-erp/reviews) - [First Resonance ION Factory OS](https://www.g2.com/products/first-resonance-ion-factory-os/reviews) - [FlowEQ](https://www.g2.com/products/floweq/reviews) - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews) - [Kinetic](https://www.g2.com/products/epicor-kinetic/reviews) - [Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-dynamics-365-business-central/reviews) - [NetSuite](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-netsuite/reviews) - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - [Part Analytics, an Altium company](https://www.g2.com/products/part-analytics-an-altium-company/reviews) - [Rimsys](https://www.g2.com/products/rimsys/reviews) - [ServiceNow Field Service Management](https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-field-service-management/reviews) - [SOLIDWORKS](https://www.g2.com/products/solidworks/reviews) - [SolidWorks PDM](https://www.g2.com/products/solidworks-pdm/reviews) - [Tulip](https://www.g2.com/products/tulip-interfaces-tulip/reviews) - [USB Drive Data Recovery](https://www.g2.com/products/usb-drive-data-recovery/reviews) ## Arena PLM & QMS Features **Quality Management** - Design Controls - Audit Management - Supplier Network Management - Risk Management **Nonconformance** - Conformance Records - CAPA - Change Management **New Product Introduction** - Ideation - Time-to-market - Cost estimating - Product approval **Quality System** - Analytics & Reporting - Real-time Collaboration - Document Control - Quality Processes **Quality system** - Document Control - Collaboration - Analytics and Reports **CAD** - CAD Models - CAD Options - Conversion **Risk Management** - Operational Risk - Supplier Evaluation **Collaboration** - Supplier alignment - Communication - Development - Document Management **Inspection Management** - Templates - Workflows - Corrective Actions **Product Data Management** - Product Metadata - Data Quality - Version Control **Compliance** - Standards & Regulations - Permits - Certifications **Bill of Materials** - BOM management - Multi-level BOM - BOM Types - BOM visualization **Engineering Change Management** - ECR Workflows - Change Management - ECO Management **Simulation** - Virtual Testing - Analysis - Optimization **Analytics** - Reporting - Costing - Product Intelligence **Quality management** - Quality planning - Traceability - Compliance **Integration** - ERP - MES - PIM - Maintenance **Generative AI** - AI Text Summarization **Platform** - Integration - Security & Privacy - Mobile Access - Flexibility **Services** - Implementation - Training & Learning - Customer Support - Professional Services ## Top Arena PLM & QMS Alternatives - [Propel](https://www.g2.com/products/propel-propel/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (143 reviews) - [Qualio](https://www.g2.com/products/qualio/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (772 reviews) - [Octave Reliance (ETQ Reliance)](https://www.g2.com/products/octave-reliance-etq-reliance/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (603 reviews)