Document Control Systems Reviews - Arena

There are few applications specifically designed for document control. Arena is one of them and it is the subject of my today's post.

Arena has the following modules:

• item management;
• Bill of Materials Management (BOM);
• change management;
• supplier collaboration;
• compliance tracking;
• project collaboration.

Item Management

Item management allows you to have part data, assemblies and documents including drawings and data sheets in one place. This is a centralized product record. You can give your team and designated suppliers controlled access to all the information they need to design and manufacture your product.

You can create a unique record for every part in your item master with customizable part numbering schemes and categories. Customizable categories can be used to determine the layout and sequence of fields in your part record.

You can see the entire revision history of an item in a single place to understand the decisions and changes that brought you to the current design. BOMControl Item Management allows you to toggle easily between the current working revision and any previous revision with one click.

Bill of Materials Management (BOM)

Your bill of materials (BOM) contains the parts and instructions that make your product. BOMControl keeps bill of material data centralized, controlled, and up-to-date.

You can quickly compare multiple BOMs to see what has changed, or what is different. You can optimize procurement and production with side-by-side bill of materials comparisons that reveal component needs across multiple product lines.

With BOM preview panels and where used panels accessible from each line in every BOM, you can move through your BOMs with ease. From top-level assembly to specific subassemblies and components, you can view specific item details, grab files and compliance information and review change order status at a glance—all without disrupting your flow.

You can specify acceptable part substitutions directly in the BOM. BOMControl allows you to designate alternate items and conditions where you might want to use them instead of the primary item designated in the BOM. You can provide alternatives for hard-to-source parts, or specify an earlier revision of an existing item as a substitute to utilize on-hand stock of a part that has been updated.

Change Management

There is a voting scheme that shows changes to one or many key stakeholders as you require their input. There is a notification system that reminds participants to vote when their input is needed. You can send virtual change packages to stakeholders and suppliers anywhere in the world, review and approve engineering change requests (ECR) and engineering change orders (ECO) from any location. With redlines and comment functionality, the BOMControl engineering change management process is controlled and transparent, so you can confidently include your supply chain in your innovation efforts.

You can capture deviations, and send them out for approval and release with a time-based user notification flag on products under deviation. BOMControl supports overlapping deviations and allows you to extend the expiration date or force expiration as needed.

You can document the decisions that led to each deviation, and the associated approval process for a complete product history. For more complete change request management, BOMControl offers detailed notification options.

Anyone with proper permissions can create a documented change request which can include files, supporting reasoning and discussion history and send it to the engineer that owns the product for more timely approvals. You can capture field failures and product feedback from operations, customer care and your supply chain to make better sourcing, purchasing and design decisions.

Incoming ideas are connected to their corresponding items so engineers know which changes affect the items they manage.

Capture the detailed cost, availability, compliance and market decisions that shape your design and manufacturing processes over time. Track approvals in threaded conversations, and control supplier participation in your process by hiding sensitive information in the discussion panel.

BOMControl engineering change management preserves not only the changes you've made, but also the full history of what influenced those decisions.

Supplier Collaboration

Everyone in your supply chain can see the same up-to-date information at all times. You can control what information you share by setting a level of access for each supplier—from read-only or component-level access, to full BOM access for trusted partners. You can even bring suppliers into your change process for more efficient feedback loops. You can protect sensitive information by designating any file as private.

Designated suppliers can view your bill of materials, compare redlines, enter quotes, upload files or even participate in your change process. Automatic notifications let partners know when their input is required, when new revisions are introduced or when a part is deviated.

BOMControl’s export functionality makes sending snapshots of your BOM and other key information an easy, repeatable process. Export in CSV, XLS or PDX format, and save your settings for consistency. You can specify a commonly used export format for key partners, and generate the BOM in the format they prefer.

Compliance Tracking

Meet regulatory requirements and manage compliance information for your products and processes with BOMControl. Track, manage and comply with medical, environmental, safety and process standards and regulations.

You can track product compliance for environmental requirements like the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive (RoHS). BOMControl compliance tracking helps you ensure that dangerous components of electronic and electrical manufacturing are managed to acceptable levels.

BOMControl enables you to efficiently and accurately track standards and certificates of compliance including UL, CE, CCC, FCC, VCCI and others.

Dedicated BOM views and reporting capabilities for compliance enable consistent conformity assessments, while engineering change management capabilities ensure that compliance can be maintained throughout a product’s lifecycle.

BOMControl has native document control capabilities that enable companies to meet ISO 9001:2000 requirements. BOMs and individual files can be managed under revision control with appropriate approvals and notifications.

You can verify and document any internal testing and standards within BOMControl, complete with approvals and notifications.

Project Collaboration

During the new product introduction (NPI) process, detailed project metrics show you the entire project at a glance and allow you to focus on the issues that most need attention. You can check the dashboard to make sure things are on track, or click through for more in-depth analysis.

You can track thousands of detailed tasks, or just a few critical project activities, so you can advance your products from one development phase to the next, even if your product structure is highly dynamic.

You can easily analyze progress at any level of the product assembly, any step in the project, or across a portfolio of projects to enable fast recognition and reaction to problems, changes and critical points.

You can define project templates that represent your high-level business processes, with milestones and phases for various types of projects such as New Product Development/Introduction or RoHS Compliance.

You can automatically generate detailed plans that keep task lists current and enable consistency enterprise-wide.

You can view late, unassigned and behind tasks associated with a project or tracked item in a project and perform "on-the-fly" problem analysis by displaying the earliest deadlines for parent items and latest deadlines for their child items. You can quickly and easily identify and drill down into problems at the portfolio, project or tracked item level.

You can notify users including suppliers of late phases, milestones and new task assignments and automatically trigger alerts for key task deadlines during the new product introduction process.

Additional Features

Flexible, persistent search - Search for components and assemblies, change orders, requests, etc. using multiple criteria including categories, attribute values, etc., then save search criteria to run the same search any time.

Document search - Locate documents by performing attribute search or by searching associations including items, suppliers, requests and changes.

Browsing history - Return to a recently viewed item with one click.

Bookmarks - Access any BOMControl record with one click from saved links on the main Dashboard page.

Configurable reports - Specify complex criteria to filter, sort and download item data. Save and share report formats, and even allow modification at run-time.

Collaborative access - Work with your authorized partners and suppliers by granting them restricted access to item information and enable them to easily download current product information including items, BOMs, and files.

Help - A help system is available on every page.

Built-In Chat and Calls - Discuss product issues and changes with your local team or your global supply chain with Skype. See who is connected to the workspace at a glance.