Santa Claus’ Workshop Confessions

As CEO of one of the largest innovative toy makers in the North Pole — if not the world — Santa knows his success depends upon aligning the focus of his merry band of toy-making elves with his organization’s strategies and business goals. But prior to integrating Arena’s all-in-one product lifecycle management (PLM) solution, toy design confusion and miscommunications among his pixie-sized workforce had led to an increasing number of product errors, scrap and rework cycles, and costly launch delays.

A culture of mistrust and blame had developed between Santa’s engineering and toy-making operation groups, leading to bickering and angry tossing of curled-tip shoes. Last year, frustrating design errors escalated and nearly caused Santa to miss his annual all-important, business-critical product delivery date of December 25th.

“You’re not going to believe it, but I had elves in our baby doll division accidentally working off of last year’s choo choo train BOM!” huffed the not-so-jolly Claus. “Clearly dolls are not supposed to have clickity-clackity wheels and engine stacks. The products were so flawed — and frankly creepy — I couldn’t unload these “manufacturing monstrosities” to even the most low-end discount outlets — and that includes the island of misfit toys.”

Arena’s all-in-one product development solution — with embedded quality management solution (QMS) and application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities — eliminated design confusion at the North Pole by removing collaboration barriers and increasing communications among Santa’s puckish workforce. Now the happy sounds of bells jingling and elves in operations and engineering cobbling together in synchronized harmony echo through Santa’s workshop.

Arena’s revision-controlled product information repository facilitated synchronization and operational efficiencies across Santa’s dispersed supply chain — including engineers, operations, supply chain partners, and contract manufacturers — by ensuring his pointy-eared teams had access to only accurate product data.

“In the past, all toys were made here at the North Pole, but in recent years — because of budget constraints — I’ve been outsourcing engineering and product design to India and China,” confesses Claus. “Arena enabled me and my global buyers to make informed purchasing decisions by providing the organization-wide visibility needed to comparatively shop for quotes on toy parts and find alternatives to expensive components with long delivery times.”

Santa also says an all-in-one product development platform ensured that his team of toy makers adhere to current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) necessary to build high quality innovative internet of toys (IoT) products that contain electrical, mechanical and software components.The internet of toys was born sometime around 1601 in Santa’s workshop. Internet of toys is not to be confused with modern day acronym Internet of Things. Although many of these things could be considered toys.

Santa smiles when asked if this PLM solution has resulted in a measurable ROI. “When people ask why I invested in Arena, I always say “to bring toys to all the good boys and girls,” Santa snickers while beaming over growth numbers from his quarterly report statement.

“But the real truth is — with Arena — I was able to dramatically maximize operation efficiencies, lower costs, accelerate time to market, and — most importantly — increase profits.”

Click here to learn how Arena can help your toy – or innovative products company reduce product error and increase operational efficiencies.

Arena helps make every product company’s holiday wishes come true by reducing risk and accelerating time to market.