Key Benefits
- Secure cloud-based solution
- Supply chain management with traceability
- NCMR and CAPA processes
- ISO certification support
- Business process guidance during implementation
Best thing about Arena
Accelerating sustainable product development.
Bottomline Impact
A secure platform with flexibility and scale to support company growth and demands.
Delivering Innovative Technologies to the Defense Industry
Pacific Defense’s mission is: We are dedicated to the uncompromising application of MOSA standards and business practices to fully realize the US DoD’s goal of enabling rapid, iterative, competitive, and affordable delivery of innovative solutions to keep pace with the evolving threat environment and protect those who serve our nation.
Business Challenges
Pacific Defense began as an innovative and agile engineering company focused on turning customer problems into solutions, moving from concept to prototype at a rapid pace. The company has perfected research and system design, actively championing open architecture and standards so customers have flexibility and adaptability. Pacific Defense recently has applied adaptability to its own business model, extending its services into building and delivering technologies to the market. The move has paid dividends, with a recent acquisition by Pacific Defense and a growing list of commercialized products in addition to their continued custom design services.
During concept and prototype phases of product development, rapid-fire creativity and problem-solving are key. Control over product definition is minimal. “You can do a lot of the early-concept design work in small teams within engineering tools and, yes, email and spreadsheets,” said Vicky Orozco, Sr. Document Control Specialist, Pacific Defense. “We had a homegrown sourcing utility that interfaced with one of our design tools and everyone did things differently.”
Pacific Defense quickly realized that with the expansion of the company’s scope to manufacturing, people, processes, and systems would be needed. “We asked ourselves: What must we do to support this revolution?” shared Vicky. “We need to deliver these leading-edge technologies that have rapid change cycles to our customers. It was immediately evident we needed a single-source system, a product lifecycle and quality management system.”
With product commercialization came additional requirements, specifically from Pacific Defense's defense customers. Pacific Defense needed to have a secure, controlled process for managing product, undergoing customer risk-based assessment audits, and demonstrating thorough configuration management practices.
The Solution
Pacific Defense had clear functional requirements for a system, including the regulatory compliance and security needed for defense work. While interested in a cloud solution, the team had questions. “We had experience on the team with on-premises solutions but were not as educated about cloud possibilities. After seeing what Arena offered in GovCloud, we knew secure cloud-based was possible,” Vicky explained. Arena met all the requirements and the response levels during the sales cycle gave Pacific Defense confidence, according to Vicky.
From Shipment to ISO Certification
Arena powers Pacific Defense's processes today. In addition to product development and change processes, the team uses Arena for the shipment configuration manifest management process essential in defense sector work. Arena captures everything that goes into a customer program, explains Vicky . “Once shipped, we record the full product record, software revisions, documents, deviations, serial numbers—everything becomes a permanent record. We can transverse from serial number to program record and back,” Vicky stated. “We use Arena for customer risk-based assessment and audits with positive feedback.”
Pacific Defense runs NCMR and CAPA quality processes through Arena and the team is thrilled with supply chain management and traceability through the product portfolio. Arena has also become critical to their current ISO certification effort. “The company had thought ISO was too big an effort in the past. Now, according to our ISO consulting experts, with Arena, we are halfway there already,” said Vicky.
“We’ve developed strong working
models of processes that now include
remote teams—Arena supports all
this with ease in a secure platform.
Since going live with Arena, the
benefits have been countless.”
–Vicky Orozco, Sr. Document Control Specialist, Pacific Defense
Results
In addition to completing ISO certification, Pacific Defense will continue to advance their product commercialization. To support this work, they are standing up a new financials and ERP system that will be integrated with Arena as well as completing design tool integrations with Arena, including OrCaD. They also will do a full supplier and contract manufacturing rollout of Arena to ensure they have the collaboration across their supply chain.
As a defense industrial base company, Pacific Defense is often exempt from pandemic-related shutdowns, but they erred on the side of safety and sent most of the team home to work remote. Despite these work shifts, they implemented Arena, refined their processes, and expanded their team. “I’ve been involved in operations and quality management for decades. Being able to have this level of secure product control connected to highly organized quality capabilities and close the loops is empowering. I look back and wish I had had this in my past life,” Vicky shared.
