Arena Fall 2014 Release Emphasizes Data and Collaboration

In addition to a host of improvements to its relatively new Quality module, Arena Solutions introduced two new products as part of this update, one a real-time commenting and sharing mechanism that captures some of the spirit of consumer social networking platforms and the other a data extraction tool for linking product-related data directly to analytics tools.

"This release is all about collaborating and understanding data better," said Steven Chalgren, Arena's vice president of product management and strategy, adding that transparent communication is critical to helping companies resolve issues and compete more effectively in today's hyper-competitive marketplace.

Unlike competing collaboration platforms, Arena Scribe lets users comment and collaborate in the context of each individual process or record in Arena PLM, which could be a change, request, supplier, project, or quality process. In addition, collaboration occurs directly within the product record and all conversations are captured so there is no requirement to search through disparate email strings to uncover relevant information.

Arena Scribe lets users comment and collaborate in the context of each individual process or record in Arena PLM. Image Courtesy of Arena Solutions

"Rather than an email that's disconnected from context, Scribe lets users have a conversation around a change order or a design review," Chalgren explained. By making the conversations part of the product record, teams can easily access valuable data at a later date, which hasn't always been possible. Moreover, just like consumer social media platforms, users can choose to follow comment streams of interest and receive dashboard and email alerts, which helps them stay up to date on incoming feeds.

"These conversations are quite valuable," he explained. "You can find out why something was released with a known issue or why someone made a decision to put an antenna on the left or right. Typically no one would find that information because it's completely disconnected from the product record. Being able to see the collaboration right there on the record makes it more powerful for the person coming in since they can get level set as to why decisions were made."

In addition to Scribe, Arena released DataExtract, used to extract process data from Arena PLM to a standard flat file format, which can then be tapped for analysis in any number of analytics tools, from simple spreadsheets to sophisticated business intelligence platforms. Engineering teams can tap the process data to feed analytics that will deliver a read on things like product health, root cause analysis, or trends in cycle time.

DataExtract extracts process data from Arena PLM to a standard flat file format, where it can be tapped by standard BI tools. Image Courtesy of Arena Solutions

DataExtract provides the Extraction and some Transformation capabilities in what's typically seen as an ETL (Extraction Transformation and Load) tool in the data warehouse and business intelligence space. For now, Arena is not providing analytics capabilities, although Chalgren acknowledged that could come at a later date.

Last, but not least, Arena Fall 2014 delivers some significant enhancements to Arena Quality, which was released earlier this year. New capabilities include automated status setting based on step completion and the ability to connect items to quality processes straight from the item header, among other usability enhancements.

The Arena Fall 2014 release will be made available later this month. Scribe and DataExtract require the purchase of additional licenses.

Check out this video to see what Arena added last year in its Fall 2013 release.