Arena Solutions Conducts BOM Management Survey

Arena Solutions, a provider of cloud-based PLM (product lifecycle management) applications, has released a survey on how companies manage multiple complex bill of materials (BOM).

The survey showed nearly half (48.4%) of respondents are using either a spreadsheet (34.6%) or nothing at all (13.8%) to manage their BOM. The survey results also demonstrated that while most respondents feel it is important to connect suppliers to the BOM, a significant number are not doing so.

According to a company press release, of the survey’s 405 total respondents, two-thirds represented organizations with fewer than 500 employees, while one-fifth represented organizations with more than 2,500 total employees. The largest single group of respondents was engineers, at 35%, while the rest were in managerial positions: 13.6% VP-level or above and 87.5% either interacted directly with the BOM or supervised those who do.

Current hurdles for more sophisticated BOM management adoption, according to Arena, include cost of licensing, difficulty of deployment and security concerns. This also accounts for companies connecting their suppliers to BOM management operations.

“We found it curious that while a majority of product companies say it’s important or absolutely critical for their suppliers to interact with the BOM, nearly half say that none of their suppliers are connected to it, primarily because it’s too difficult, but also due to cost and security concerns,” said Kent Killmer, vice president of Marketing, Arena Solutions. “Thankfully, there’s a solution. Our SaaS, cloud-based PLM enables product companies to connect suppliers quickly and inexpensively. And due to our multi-tenant, single-instance of software architecture, we can make upgrades, updates and security patches effortlessly across our entire customer base. By making it easier to connect suppliers—and their suppliers—to the product record, we’ve helped to greatly reduce problems of version control, scrap, rework, product delays and continued to shrink time to market.”

Download a copy of Arena’s study here.

For more information, visit Arena.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.