Arena Solutions history

1950: Concept of “configuration management” is introduced by the United States Department of Defense as a paper-based system for documenting and tracking how products are configured.2

1966: American economist Raymond Vernon publishes “International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle.” In this article he theorizes the product lifecycle to include the following stages: introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, and decline.3

1969: Software company United Computing (later known as Unigraphics) releases UNIAPT, one of the world’s first commercially available computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) products.

1970: United States military issues standards (i.e., “MIL-STD”) on how government contractors should use configuration management.

1979: Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston introduce the first electronic spreadsheet program called VisiCalc.

1985: American Motors Corporation first uses PLM to accelerate production of their vehicles, notably the Jeep® Grand Cherokee.7

1992: Jeep® Grand Cherokee is the first recorded product built using a process called “product lifecycle management.”6

2000: The first multi-tenant Cloud PLM solution, BOMControl, is introduced by Bom.com which later becomes known as Arena Solutions.6

Eight years straight! Arena was recognized as a Top Workplace in 2019 by the Bay Area News.