How to Speed New Product Development: Insights from Leading Innovators
Full transcript below:
Alaine Portnoy
Welcome, everyone. We are very happy to have you join us for today’s webinar on how to speed new product development insights from leading innovators. We’re excited to have a great customer panel for you today and hope you find this to be very educational.
I would now like to introduce our moderator and panelists for today’s discussion.
First, I would like to introduce Scott Reedy. Scott is the Senior Director of Marketing at Arena and will moderate the customer panel discussion today. Before working at Arena, Scott spent a decade working in engineering for a high-tech manufacturer and later worked in consulting, helping companies implement product lifecycle management systems. And now I would like to introduce our customer panelists and I will begin with Christine Pompa. Christine is the Director of Quality Assurance at eMagin Corporation, a manufacturer of all OLED microdisplays for the military and industrial markets. She has over 25 years of experience in manufacturing and operations and has been responsible for the implementation of QMS systems, ERP software, and PLM systems.
She holds a BS in mathematics from Niagara University and MS in applied statistics from Rochester Institute of Technology. And next, we have Julie Toscano. Julie is the Configuration and Process Manager at Sonos, the inventor of multiroom wireless home audio. So with 20 years of electronic design and new product introduction experience and over five years of PLM experience, Julie brings a wealth of process knowledge on successfully transitioning designs out of MPI and into production. Julie has a degree in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
And our third panelist today is Jeremy Timothy. Jeremy is a Configuration Analyst for Listen Technologies. He has been working closely with engineering and manufacturing for over eight years. Jeremy was the initial implementer of our main PLM for his company. Before his current position, he worked for many years as a product manager. He has experience with electrical and mechanical manufacturing processes, change management, document control, and also new product development. So he has an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a bachelor of science degree from Brigham Young University, and is project management certified.
So that concludes our speaker lineup for today. And with that, I would like to turn the mic over to our moderator, Scott.
Scott Reedy
Great. Thanks, Alaine.
It’s great to be with everyone today. We’ve got some great companies represented on our panel, and our panelists have well over 60 years of experience—but they also told me that they started working around age 15! Our panelists’ companies manufacture complex consumer electronics, and these are products that have software sensors, electronics, and hardware, and they’re also leveraging new technologies like the Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, and other wireless technologies. So I want to get started by giving a little more background on our speakers and their company so you have a better idea as to what types of companies and technologies are represented today.
So to start, tell us a little bit about your company and what you find exciting about your products, your technology, or your plans. Christine, why don’t we start with you.
Christine Pompa
Hi Scott, thanks so much. I’m really happy to be here today. eMagin manufactures OLED microdisplays, which are organic LED displays about the size of a postage stamp. And you can see from the photo on your screen, our displays are used in head-mounted devices that provide virtual reality imaging to military ground soldiers. They help train pilots in 3D flight simulations, support medical imaging devices, and assistance in a lot of night-vision applications.
The technology is groundbreaking and it’s exciting to be part of this industry. We’re constantly working on creating brighter displays and smaller configurations that use less power.
Scott Reedy
Great. Thanks, Christine. Yeah, that’s really cool technology. And Julie, what about Sonos?
Julie Toscano
Hey Scott, thanks for inviting me to be here today. At Sonos, we’re focused on bringing the best sound experience possible to our customers—no matter what you want to listen to or how loudly you want to hear it, Sonos fills the room with clear and detailed sound that you can feel all around you. Sonos works with all the streaming services and voice assistance services that you know and love. And it’s been really cool to be part of a team that brings music to people’s lives and also help them imagine new ways in which we’ll be able to do this in the future.
Scott Reedy
Nice. Yeah. And being a product that’s sold to consumers, I suspect that many of our attendees either have Sonos products or know someone who does. That’s great. And Jeremy, tell us a little bit about Listen Technologies.
Jeremy Timothy
Yes. Thanks, Scott for having me here today. I’m excited also to be here. Listen Technologies designs and engineers and manufactures wireless audio products. We have over a hundred purchasable parts with thousands of components and parts. We have a hundred purchasable products with many parts. Our products provide solutions to those who may be hard of hearing or may be in environments where there’s competing background noise. The applications that most users know are devices for theaters or churches, tours, sports bars, restaurants, or even health clubs.
While most of our products have a proprietary electrical and mechanical design, we recently created a smartphone application in conjunction with a Wi-Fi server that we produce. So this is really exciting for our company.
Scott Reedy
That’s great. Yeah. And as you talk about that smartphone application, can you give us an example as to what a use case for that might be?
Jeremy Timothy
Yes. We have a large Sports Book in Las Vegas, Caesar’s Palace, who has many displays that are showing different sporting events to the different people within the Sports Book. And to be able to capture the audio from each of those displays, we have produced an app that will gather the channel, that will collect the channel from the Wi-Fi and be able to play it back on a smart device.
So it’s a really revolutionary application and it’s something that has been asked for many times in the past.
Scott Reedy
That’s awesome. Yeah. I didn’t even know that that technology existed. So that’s great.
All right, well, let’s go ahead and we’ll move on to our next question. We’ve learned over many years that small and medium-sized companies tend to start with smaller point solutions like Excel, Word, and other file-sharing solutions. And I know some of you have used manual systems or spreadsheets before implementing a product lifecycle management or PLM system. So what were your biggest challenges that you faced and what impact did it have on getting products designed into the market? And Christine, why don’t we start with you?
Christine Pompa
Sure. I think our biggest issue before launching PLM was having confidence in the accuracy of our data. When we used a manual system, it allowed people to save files anywhere they wanted and there was always a risk of not knowing whether you had the latest or most accurate information when you looked at a drawing or a BOM or a work instruction. And it was challenging even a small company to prevent multiple versions of the same item from being used throughout our operations. Speaking from a doc control aspect, it was also challenging to hunt people down and get them to review and approve changes.
A change would sit in a queue until that function reviewed and approved it and then would get carted off to the next function and then the next, so not a very efficient means of getting things done.
Scott Reedy
Yeah. I remember when I ran engineering services doc control many years ago, it was very difficult to go ahead and get reviewers to sign off on changes and push things through so that ability to automate the process helps to shrink the development cycle and the overall time to market. Jeremy, what about your challenges?
Jeremy Timothy
So I’d say we had three major challenges at Listen Technologies. The first one was bill of materials control and with the lack of a real way to have a revision control within Excel our BOMs became nearly impossible to work with and a lot of our revisions became mixed. And we didn’t have an opportunity to redline anything in Excel because it’s a little bit more challenging with that also. So what happened was we would have errors in our manufacturing procedures.
Our second one was having files scattered throughout the universe, basically, an email or SharePoint or Dropbox, and that was a real challenge because you didn’t know where to go to get the file that you needed. So that was a real challenge for us. And the third one definitely was the change management process that we kind of worked our way through and I don’t know how it all came together in the end, but it didn’t come together as well as we needed it to.
So it was very tedious tasks because the products, inventories and BOMs, and histories were not all linked together. Revision histories were a lot of times scattered through emails and it was an exceedingly difficult task to track why, when, and how a change was promoted.
Scott Reedy
Yeah. That’s interesting. I think that as I’ve worked with different manufacturing companies over the years, that scattered environment, or having silos of information, definitely creates more confusion and errors with everyone who’s trying to get that product down. So that’s very interesting.
All right. Our next question is: What benefits or process improvements have you seen since implementing PLM? And Julie, let’s get your thoughts first.
Julie Toscano
Sure, Scott. PLM has helped us really keep some consistency in our data and in our processes as well. And then once we’re able to build a repeatable process, the PLM system has really shown us where our gaps are and therefore has fostered some continuous improvements for our process, which have helped to expedite time to market and time to prototype. We’ve also seen improved communication with our suppliers—external, and with our internal teams as well.
Scott Reedy
Nice. Yeah. Continuous improvement, I’m sure everyone on the call today is interested in that. So appreciate those thoughts. Jeremy, what about you?
Jeremy Timothy
So, my main role focuses on producing products efficiently from the concept to the end of life. And the PLM has provided a very structured process that I can reinforce throughout my organization and because of this, it has caused a real cultural shift in the way that we look at engineering within our company. It’s also allowed for more efficiency during the production designs and with our engineers. It’s cut down on manufacturing errors, as I mentioned earlier that we were having, especially in the prototype and alpha stages, which has really hastened our time to market and decreased delays.
Our communication with our manufacturing partners is much more seamless and it can be easily captured and archived. And streamlining all of the change management processes going from a request to a change to implementation has been a great benefit for us to see the path that we’ve taken during that process. It’s helped us improve the way that we do things at Listen. And finally, the centralizing of all the source documents, as I mentioned earlier, has been a great asset for our company.
Scott Reedy
Yeah. It’s interesting because I’ve seen those cultural shifts occur too. Sometimes companies or engineers and other product team members don’t want to have more controls placed on them but once they start using a solution like this, they see that the ease of collaboration, the ability to get information and know that you’re looking at the latest and greatest information is definitely of great benefit. Christine, what’s been your experience?
Christine Pompa
So as you can imagine, from what I discussed earlier, the time to review and approve changes post-PLM has significantly decreased. It used to take us about a week to get done—can get done now in about a few days and we can react to the needs of our business in a much more efficient manner. Personally speaking, I’ve learned so much about all of the operations that affect eMagin by taking over the role of implementing Arena. Since Arena allows you to customize your system to suit your needs, you need to understand the good portion of your processes so you can help set them up accurately and to benefit your overall company.
I think our team now recognizes the advantages of knowing where all the documentation resides and the information now gets to the right people when they need it, and that’s a real benefit for sure. They also see the advantage of being able to find information using searches rather than having to comb through folders to find something they’re looking for.
Scott Reedy
Got it. Yeah. You talked about customizing the PLM system and sometimes when people hear that they go, “Oh, I need to be a coder. I need to code to make changes.” So can you explain what’s involved when you say “customize” to the audience?
Christine Pompa
Absolutely. So what’s really nice about Arena is you can set up different categories and attributes—they’ll all allow you to search easier and find information easier. So for example, you could, like, look up a PCB for a particular product type and it will give you all the items that are associated with that.
Scott Reedy
Got it. And while we’re on that topic, I don’t know, Julie or Jeremy, do you have anything to add with regards to your experience with customization of the system?
Julie Toscano
Yeah. Scott, I agree with Christine. I mean, a process that worked for Sonos eight years ago when we first configured Arena is typically not relevant in our business model today. I mean, and to think our database has changed quite a bit, just even in the past 12 months, never mind eight years ago. We’ve reconfigured it recently for scalability and to update some of our process models; we’ve removed legacy attributes; we’ve added new and improved attributes; we’ve reconfigured how we source components.
We’ve implemented previously underutilized features in Arena and we’ve even changed some of how we do internal partnering. So it’s been very flexible and tailorable to our needs recently.
Scott Reedy
Great, great.
Jeremy Timothy
And for us, Scott, I think each culture of a company that is looking into a PLM is going to look at things such as change management or the way they structure bill of materials a little bit different. Because of this, one of the things that has really been a great feature for us, and has provided many benefits, are the custom attributes within Arena—because at that point we can customize our database with our nomenclature, with the language that we speak.
And because, like I said, it’s a little bit different from company to company and much like Julie, we’ve gone through several small to large iterations of our PLM to make it better. It’s something that we have learned over time and today we are much, much more efficient than we were when we first started and that’s because of the flexibility of Arena PLM.
Scott Reedy
Got it. Got it. Very good. Alright, so let’s go ahead and our next question is, many companies have distributed product teams or they outsource manufacturing to some degree.
So describe your company’s manufacturing model and how PLM has helped you. And Jeremy, let’s start with you.
Jeremy Timothy
Okay. Our company does all of the electrical and mechanical engineering domestically. We use an overseas contract manufacturer, CM, to obtain parts and to build the product. The communication of the production requirements and sourcing is all done through Arena PLM. Our conversations actions can be captured and archived within the database and the PLM has really given us a good history of things that we’ve done.
And again, it manages all that documentation, all the compliance documentation, all the files for a PCB build, or for all the SolidWorks files, for Pro/E files for the engineering side of the mechanical engineering side. So now we have a really good, precise historical record of each part that we’ve used, and when it’s used, and how it was sourced, and even a cost history.
Scott Reedy
Yeah, that’s great. I think that audit trail, that precise historical record as you call it, is key and it helps when you’re not only making your initial decisions but also to prevent finger-pointing between the internal product teams and your contract manufacturers and all their suppliers. So that’s great. Christine, what about you?
Christine Pompa
Sure. At eMagin, our procurement team does a great job of communicating our requirements to our vendors, and with a PLM system they know now where to get the latest drawings and documents and BOMs, and there’s no guessing or having to ask someone where to go to get the documentation so that we can send it to our vendor so that they make us the right parts.
Scott Reedy
Nice. And Julie, what about you? What’s been your experience and how has PLM helped your company?
Julie Toscano
It’s got the ability to share the data with our teams and our suppliers immediately upon release. It has eliminated the need for emails, which everybody touched upon here, which has its caveats of they can be incorrect, correspondence, or content missed or superseded easily or lost in an inbox. So it’s easy to share data with our CMs with Arena PLM, but we are also able to share only the data that our suppliers require and only after it’s been approved by Sonos, which increases both reliability and privacy.
Scott Reedy
Got it. Got it. Yeah, I think that’s a key point about your CMs and your suppliers. So can you share maybe a little bit more about how Arena helps you control what your suppliers and contract manufacturers have access to?
Julie Toscano
Yeah, sure. Yeah, Arena allows us to leverage license privileges or sourcing of components and assemblies and then file privacy settings to help us keep our data secure.
Scott Reedy
Got it. And it seems clear that PLM has made it easier for all of you, our panelists today, to collaborate with your teams and your supply chains. I’m just curious if anyone has any other examples or might be able to discuss how things were done maybe before using PLM and how the world’s changed.
Jeremy Timothy
So we would use Word documents for our change management processes, and obviously with a Word document you really can’t capture the history of that part from concept to end of life because it’s broken out in a bunch of different Word documents. And with our revision control, we were using Excel.
And Excel, the one thing that it really didn’t allow us to do is to bring in a library of parts and have them show where they are used, which really would cut down on the sourcing and duplication of parts. So that’s where we were in the past, and today it’s obviously in one great big database that’s easily accessible and the way we’ve created the metadata, it’s very, very quick to get to where you need to be within that database.
Scott Reedy
Got it.
Christine Pompa
Yeah. I’d have to say, to jump on Jeremy’s thoughts about Excel, we used to use Excel for our BOMs as well. And what was a little bit challenging was when you have a bill of materials or several bills of materials that share the same component, you’d have to go and remember to change each specific bill of materials to update a component when something changes. And what’s really nice about PLM is when you change a component, it goes and finds all of the BOMs that are related to that component and you can do the change all at once.
Scott Reedy
Nice. Yeah. I know in my past life working with BOMs, they’re typically multilevel from a finished good, top-level down to the lower-level assemblies, and trying to do that easily in Excel is difficult. And you also don’t have quite the ability to link each of the components and assemblies to all the associated information, whether it be CAD files, specifications, drawings, or things like that. So I appreciate that.
Alright. So beyond managing complex product information, some of you deal with various types of regulatory compliance. What types of compliance initiatives do you deal with and how has PLM helped? And Christine, why don’t we start with you?
Christine Pompa
Okay. We deal a lot with ISO 9001 and AS 9100 requirements and we’ve been using Arena training for about a year now, and we’re documenting our training program here and it’s really working well. Our external auditors are impressed with the training plans that we’ve created and the records that we’re keeping. Our next goal is to go live with training reassessments so that we refresh operators and technicians over time and implement quizzes, and it’s a nice way to have one place to keep all your information again, without relying on spreadsheets and forms.
We also utilize Arena to capture and document our contract review. Customers have been super impressed by this also, so we send out customer purchase orders for review and approval right through the system and it creates a permanent record of the review. So again, no signatures are needed. So between this and training, a lot of good information is kept right online.
Scott Reedy
Nice. Yeah. We actually use training ourselves and we use it for our quality processes and procedures, and it really helps to make sure that the entire team is trained at all times, that we have accountability for that training just in case some issues arise later. Julie, what types of compliance issues do you deal with?
Julie Toscano
At Sonos, we’ve recently expanded the compliance module and Arena helps us track and share material testing, mainly for Row House compliance right now with our internal teams and with our suppliers. Suppliers can electronically drop files for us using Arena FileDrop and then we’re able to tie them to our components and our PLM. We also have an integration with SiliconExpert right inside of Arena, which helps us track the lifecycles of electrical components, mitigate risk, and together with both of these functions when a component is reused from design to design, especially all the Row House material data is attached and reused and it eliminates the need for redundant testing and expedites time-to-production release.
Scott Reedy
Nice. Yeah. Having that, being able to source the right parts with your integration to SiliconExpert, I’m sure that really simplifies the entire compliance process. Great. And Jeremy, tell us about your experience.
Jeremy Timothy
Yeah. So as we’ve become a worldwide company, selling to other countries, using the compliance portion of Arena has been very critical for us. We deal a lot with the FCC. We also deal a lot with each country’s different spectrum of frequencies and because of that, the testing is all a little bit different from country to country. We also have to use documentation for safety and we use documentation for RoHS and REACH.
So the PLM has become a central source of capturing all of the information that we need. One of the things I like about Arena PLM compliance bill of materials is you can look at each item within a bill of materials and see if that item is compliant to the compliant certification that you’re looking for. So a good example is RoHS, which a lot of us will deal with.
It will show me each item and then it will scale up to the top and show me if the whole bill of materials is compliant or not.
Scott Reedy
Yeah, that’s great. I think that ability to see throughout your entire bill of materials from the top structure all the way down to the bottom, whether things are complainant to RoHS or REACH or WEEE or other types of compliance initiatives, is really helpful.
So our final question for the panel before we get ready to turn it over to the audience is: When it comes to using PLM, what final thoughts or tips might you share? And Julie, let’s start with you.
Julie Toscano
Thanks, Scott. In my previous company, I did set up Arena PLM and my experience with Sonos has been slightly different in that when I joined Sonos they already had Arena PLM in place, as I mentioned, since 2011—and I’ve seen how it has served Sonos differently from the different phases as our company has evolved from a smaller startup company to public company. And with that change has come a different business mindset and our processes have been reevaluated, and we’ve been able to reconfigure Arena PLM to support these changes without impeding production.
Scott Reedy
Nice. Yeah. Whether you’re a small startup company or midsize or even a larger global company, being able to scale with a system that you get in place is key. Jeremy, what about your thoughts?
Jeremy Timothy
Yes. Being able to be a part of the original architecture and original thought process of Arena, I’ve used all of that knowledge to really get myself and the company to a place where it’s very efficient. Arena PLM is a real game-changer for our company when it comes down to that efficiency. Having all the important product information and product history in one place has drastically cut down on the time spent to look for a document or to look through emails.
Our processes are much more defined and structured. The bill of materials control, as I mentioned, and the redline features, are very critical to give us where things have changed from a previous production. This has been a great asset to our CM. Capturing all the sourcing information is obviously critical as we mentioned just previously. Change management is now a very systematic process within our company and it works very efficiently. This is something that we’ve worked hard on to make it better and it’s much better for our CM.
And finally, with all the customizable features, Arena PLM has provided our company a way to include our own intricacies and nomenclature that are very familiar with our team.
Scott Reedy
Nice, I think all of these things kind of come together and if I was going to summarize what you said, it’s that control, that ability to automate the process, and to be able to collaborate easily with your entire team. Christine, what are your final thoughts?
Christine Pompa
So I think the biggest advantage of moving towards a PLM system would be moving your business towards a more disciplined mindset even if the engineers and technicians and users don’t know they’re coming along for the ride. Because as you grow your business, you really need to standardize your processes and you need to rely on accurate data and Arena really helps with this challenge. It’s a pretty user-friendly system that’s easy to configure, as I had said before, and quite customizable, and you don’t have to have a computer degree to set it up and implement it in an organization.
I like to say, if I can do it, anyone can do it. So there was one other thing—we’ve been using Arena now for over three years, but it seems like we still discover new features and parts of Arena that we’re still not utilizing. And I wonder if this is the same for you, either Julie or Jeremy?
Julie Toscano
Yeah. Christine, as I mentioned, our workspace has changed quite a bit and we’re still leveraging new modules within Arena PLM such as compliance and even the quality module, too. But we all talk about the user interface of Arena, its ability to customize or reconfigure it as the business needs and requirements evolve. And often other tools require an outside contractor to support, as they’re heavily coded and the workspace that we started with isn’t what we have now.
And that doesn’t mean that it was set up wrong. I mean, it was set up to meet our needs at the time. No one has a crystal ball, but, as Scott mentioned, Arena’s very scalable. So while you may not have all the answers when you start with Arena, it allows you to adjust as your company evolves.
Jeremy Timothy
And for our company I think it’s much like any other company when you start using it—you believe that you’re complete when you start, when you turn the database on and it’s ready to go, but there are so many things in our complex business models and through manufacturing that get brought up, that it’s really important to have something customizable, that’s going to be scalable, because your first thoughts and concepts of the PLM will change slightly and little things will need to be enhanced.
And so I think that the real beauty of Arena PLM is the ability to customize—to be able to customize product, your bill of materials, which documents you need, all of these great things that you’ll be capturing inside of there. And it’s been very helpful for our company.
Julie Toscano
Thanks. It’s nice to know that we’re not alone.
Jeremy Timothy
You’re not.
Scott Reedy
Yeah. I appreciate all those thoughts. So thanks to our panel for sharing your thoughts and insights. And we’re going to turn the time back to Alaine and she will address any audience questions at this time.
Alaine Portnoy
Thank you, Scott. And thank you, everyone. That was a great discussion that I’m sure a lot of the information was relatable to our audience. And also sure it leads to some good questions. So with that, we’re going to start answering the questions that have already been submitted. And if you have questions that arise during this session, feel free to continue to add them.
All right. And our first question is kind of two-pronged. “For companies that share information with their contract manufacturers, is the information you share with suppliers secure? Can you control the type of information the CMs have access to, such as types of changes or specific product information like cost?” I believe Julie and Jeremy both referenced working with CMs. So maybe both of you can answer this and Julie I’ll start with you.
Julie Toscano
Sure, Alaine, thanks. As I mentioned, we control visibility to our CMs with our data in a few ways within Arena. And first with regards to cost, when a supplier is invited to your Arena space, their license is configurable read, write, or both, and then they also have the option to allow them to view cost information. Once their license is set up, then the next thing we can do is add them to components and assemblies that are sourced to them, and this way they see the assemblies that they’re building or components that they’re making.
And then lastly, inevitably we have proprietary information that we cannot share outside of the company. So we’re able to restrict their views by putting a privacy setting on the files that we want to keep private from all of the suppliers. And then, also, we have the change management aspect as well, where we can control visibility and suppliers may participate in a request process, and then they also participate in the implementation process of the ECOs that they’re invited to participate in.
Alaine Portnoy
Okay, great. Thank you. Jeremy, did you want to add to that?
Jeremy Timothy
We control the experience for our CM much like what Julie has said and the way I look at it isn’t that they weren’t necessarily making a custom view for what they need to see sometimes, but I look at it as kind of eliminating any possible confusions because I can really build the item, the bill of materials to be exactly what they need to see. So there’s no getting anything mixed up like we had done in the past.
And again, showing all this relevant information has really helped the CM.
Alaine Portnoy
Great. Thank you. So our next audience question is, “What type of PLM process performance data is readily available from the system? How well is it working and how has it improved?” So I’m not sure if anyone has information on that.
Christine Pompa
Yeah, I’ll tackle that. So right now we actually utilize a lot of reports to gather data and look at what kind of timeline it takes to get changes through and how well they get processed and implemented. And I think it’s worked well. Like I said before, I think we went from about a week to about two days, and what’s really nice is you can put approval deadlines in for changes or something like that to actually make sure that you get approvals complete in a certain amount of time.
There’s also another module called Arena Analytics that you can do a lot of real metric-based data. We’re just learning how to implement and utilize and tap into that resource. So as we get more and more familiar with that I think it’ll really make a difference here at eMagin.
Alaine Portnoy
Great. Thank you, Christine. Anyone else? If not, we’ll move on to the next audience question. “What was needed to process your data into the Arena solutions format? Just the data, were there worksheets, forms, how long did the implementation from documents, spreadsheets, etcetera, to PLM take?”
Jeremy Timothy
I can take this one.
Alaine Portnoy
All right, Jeremy.
Jeremy Timothy
So then what’s needed is you need to start gathering, you probably need to have some long meetings on deciding how you want your database to look when it comes to part numbering and what files you want to have, the way your bill of materials structure needs to be. And then from there, you really start gathering documentation for this. And it’s a pretty intuitive upload into Arena. It’s not that difficult.
You do use a CSV file to form your items and it’s a very good asset to use that CSV file also to build your bill of materials. And the way that it’s laid out is very intuitive and is not that challenging. But the main thing is making sure you have all your ideas and your processes on bill of materials even though they may change in the future, have them in line so that when you go to upload, it looks the way that you want it to look.
And it’s not that challenging and it’s something that can be done fairly quickly.
Christine Pompa
Yeah, I would agree with that. So we actually had a person from Arena help us and it took us about, I would say, six to nine months to get everything mapped in and set up correctly the way we wanted it. But I would agree with Jeremy that it’s not that difficult to upload the information and get the information the way you want to see it. And it’s not that painful to set it up. And what I liked about it is you can customize it and kind of redirect and move and play a little bit in both the test environment and then move that over to the production environment.
So, all in all, it was a pretty nice, seamless transition.
Julie Toscano
And to add to that Christine, as I’ve mentioned, we’ve done numerous reconfigurations of our workspace in Arena, and in addition to the CSV files, there is an API option to do imports as well. And we have had outstanding support from Arena in that regard to be able to bulk-update fields that may not be importable for most users. They’ve really done a great job supporting us in that regard. So however you do go live, you would do a bulk update later on down the road in a similar way.
So it’s good to understand the process to make it easy to update later on as an admin.
Alaine Portnoy
That’s great. All great answers by everyone. Thank you. So our next question is about engineering change processes: “Improved engineering change processes were mentioned during the discussion today. And can you elaborate on how ECOs are managed and processed in Arena and how are team members notified?”
Christine Pompa
Well, here at eMagin, I think it’s made my doc control person’s life so much easier. So when a change is submitted for approval, all approvals get notified via email and you can even add extra people in to comment only or to have an optional approval based on the change that you’re processing. There’s a change administrator that handles all of the ECOs and it’s really easy to run reports to see how many changes are awaiting approvals or pending. It sure helps us stay on top of changes and getting changes processed in a timely manner.
Alaine Portnoy
Great. Thanks, Christine.
Julie Toscano
Yeah, I would agree with that too, Alaine Portnoy.
Alaine Portnoy
Okay.
Julie Toscano
As the design nears the production realization phase, you obviously want to include more team members as part of the change management approval process—because the impact is far more significant than it was earlier on in the development phases where sometimes only the immediate team needs to know about a change. So we do customize our ECO routings based on the design maturity, and the Arena admin is able to configure these as well to make sure that the right team members are participating consistently during the design process.
And then the output of that, our users who are on these ECOs are usually notified with either their Arena dashboard or with the auto-notification emails from Arena.
Alaine Portnoy
Alright, great. Thank you. Jeremy, did you have anything to add to this?
Jeremy Timothy
Sure. Our supplier has access to engineering change requests and because of that, that really can get the ball moving in the direction of making the change management process. So we really use ECRs as a way to capture all of the potential changes and sometimes the priority of the change. And I do that through custom attributes, having more CMs on that same page and having them submitting ECRs to us is very, very beneficial for us. And then our team will discuss those and move them throughout the ECO process and again after that request has been processed and the ECO has been created, submitted, and tracked, it will go through implementation.
And I have visibility to all of that, which is critical for me to know where we are and with the change and why it happened, when it happened, and when it occurred.
Alaine Portnoy
Thank you. Okay. Next question. “We are a small company and don’t have a lot of processes in place. How flexible is Arena when it comes to that?” So I think this kind of goes across the board as well. So maybe Julie, we’ll start with you this time.
Julie Toscano
Sure, Alaine. As I’ve mentioned, Arena has really allowed us to shift out of start mode where the process was almost secondary to product development and then towards corporate mode where we have to rely on processes now to keep our data consistent for all of our internal and external customers. But in the year that I’ve been here with Sonos, we’ve reconfigured it, as I mentioned, with multiple mass updates, added countless features, and it’s really grown with us to meet our process needs. It’s been very scalable as I mentioned before.
It’s key to mention that Arena will not develop a process for you. However, it will fit whatever models you do have and will help you visualize your gaps. And it’s tailorable to close those gaps, and we haven’t been able to find a situation yet that Arena was not able to meet our needs, and it’s really facilitated the continuous improvement model.
Alaine Portnoy
Christine, do you have anything you’d like to add?
Christine Pompa
Yeah, well, I think Arena is a great way to start using a PLM system to start, to put the processes in place that you need without bogging down your business with a lot of paper and red tape. I agree with Julie, it helps facilitate continuous improvement. eMagin is considered a small company; we’re about a hundred people and it works really well for us.
Alaine Portnoy
That’s great. Thank you. And then how about you, Jeremy?
Jeremy Timothy
Arena really provides a good structure. It’s a very rigid structure to get your company moving down the right path with your processes, but it also has that customization, those features that really, as I mentioned in the past, you can add a little bit of your culture into Arena. So each company will have a slightly different process flow and the data that will need to be captured will be a little bit different.
At Listen, I’ve created a few custom attributes that have helped us to become more efficient with our PLM.
Alaine Portnoy
Okay, awesome. So we are running up against the time here. I’m just going to ask a couple more questions and then we’re going to wrap it up for today. Any open questions we are happy to address after the webinar today. So the next question. “Our company is working towards ISO compliance. Did having Arena or a PLM help simplify the compliance prep audit process for you?” And I want to say Christine was the one who spoke about ISO certification. So Christine do you want to take this one?
Christine Pompa
Yeah. Absolutely. That’s a great question. So personally, I think that when you implement a PLM system before you move towards ISO certification, it really helps to allow you to build your documentation system in a manner that will help you when you do have your audits. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have to look through paper books to find a procedure, or, worst, hunt through folders and subfolders trying to find a work instruction or something to show an auditor and you just can’t find it. It made it seem like we didn’t even know our system.
So with a PLM system like Arena, you can put in a simple string of characters and a search field and the item comes up with a list or all the items come up in a list. So the smarter you make your system by putting the different categories and attributes, the easier it is to find your information. I’m now a convert. I no longer believe in the smart part numbering system and I don’t believe that’s the way to go, and it really took Arena implementation to get me to see the light.
Alaine Portnoy
Thank you. So this will be our last question for today: “There was a reference to integration with SiliconExpert. Does this integration enable direct access to component information within SiliconExpert?” And I want to say that Julie was the one that spoke about that integration. So Julie, can you take this question?
Julie Toscano
Yeah, sure, Alaine. Yeah, we do use SiliconExpert here at Sonos. We use it as a stand-alone tool and also as an integration with the BOM viewer in Arena. And the SiliconExpert BOM and Arena will allow you to do a real-time data lookup from SiliconExpert and pull that information into a BOM view in Arena. And from there, you can view the risk of the component, the lifecycle status, and even alternates all from the SiliconExpert database. And it really gives our engineers and sourcing teams a quick check of the overall health of their BOMs right from Arena.
Alaine Portnoy
That’s perfect. Thank you. These are really great questions for today. So that will wrap up our Q&A portion of today’s webinar.
In closing, I would like to thank our customers Christine, Julie, and Jeremy, and our moderator, Scott, for a great discussion today. I also want to thank our audience for attending. I do hope you found this to be informative and educational. That concludes our session and have a great day everyone!