Aras - www.aras.com
myInnovator Subscriber Login

Customers |

Open Source PLM Community Quotes

See what people are saying about Aras

Aras enterprise open solutions are for performance driven companies of all sizes from Fortune 500 enterprises to midsized businesses looking to get an edge on the competition. Companies achieve better customer alignment, greater profit margins, and shorter development cycles with the Aras Innovator enterprise open source solutions.

View More Quotes | Submit a Quote
Aerospace & Defense Contractor Executive Vice President
We needed a PLM solution that could manage a variety of engineering and manufacturing related functions, and that was able to adapt quickly to changes in our business based on continuous improvement activities.
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
Our company's 'homebrew' OrCAD integration is tightly coupled to Aras Innovator. Parts are uploaded directly to Innovator and appear near instantaneously in OrCAD Capture Component Information System (CIS).

Each electronic part's characteristic is entered by the user via a drop-down menu of predefined variables, precluding variation and ensuring that parts are entered accurately. Part descriptions are generated from characteristics, ensuring consistency and avoiding duplication.
Varian Manager of IT Engineering Systems
In our industry superior quality and customer responsiveness are essential to maintain leadership.
Freudenberg-NOK (FNGP) Director
Aras really hit a home run with the functionality to make our Aras Innovator deployment successful.
Fortune 100 High Tech Engineering Manager
Only Aras can handle the complexity of multiple, simultaneous BOM's for the same Part. No other PLM can hande the complexity.
Fox Electronics Chief Executive Officer
The bottom line for Fox is that Aras Innovator enables us to serve our customers better, improve our quality, and significantly reduce our costs all at the same time.
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
While Aras Innovator can be implemented right out of the box, we found that customizing our installation with a rich database of consistent, parametric part data added significant value.
Semiconductor Equipment provider IT Engineering Services
We pay attention to these things because with baselines, you get your processes under control, you do it right the first time and put a little thought into it you can really start seeing some appreciable savings.
Xerox PLM Mgr
... Bottom line is that after just a few days of development the team is working with a new tool and solving business problems.
Sonnax CEO
Our most important goal is and has always been customer satisfaction. Aras helps Sonnax continuously elevate our commitment to excellence through superior product quality and service and gives us even more time for personal relationships with our customers.
Comment posted on Daily PLM Think Tank Blog AndyF
While there are lots of application building software that can be used to solve various PLM problems, Innovator is the best one we've ever seen.

The trick with Innovator is that it has so much pre-built functionality. The pre-built functions can be quickly assembled to solve most any data management problem.

The fact that the software is free is a very nice bonus but the functionality is what is important.
Anders Electronics (posted on Aras Forums) PLM Developer
The application is awesome.
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
It [Aras Innovator] can also be implemented completely independent of Aras assistance. In fact, for small to mid-sized organizations, this might be the preferred method. We learned a lot and implemented the system we needed.
CNT Configuration Manager
Aras was the only PLM solution that fit both our functional requirements and need for incremental deployment.
High Tech Equipment provider IT Engineering Services
With Aras we have a single database that gives us an exact picture of where we stand in regard to customer commitments.
AMR Research Kevin OMarah, Chief Strategy Officer
Good selling in the current environment is possible where vendors offer small increments of technology as part of a roadmap for long-term improvement, rather than big lump sum deals with all the risk front-loaded on the user.
Comment posted on Daily PLM Think Tank Blog AndyF
At the end of the day I don't really care if Aras is open source or not. The licenses are free, the software works, and I can exchange ideas with other users. That model works great for us.
High Tech Electronics company Executive
A lot of our suppliers are in Asia and the Aras system had to be intuitive.
Carestream Health Bruce Leidal, CIO
We're a progressive company, and we want to work with other forward-thinking companies who can help us eliminate organizational silos and increase collaborative development to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Amtech Jay Patel, President
With Aras, cycle time for new product introduction goes from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days.
Industrial equipment company Engineering Manager
Having the tools in place and a proven framework to follow sure helps. Aras Innovator has provided that framework and we are much further down the path to a defined and accountable development and documentation process than previously.
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
Aras is going to become an extremely vital part of this organization. With Aras, we can take it so much further
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
Because Aras is a web-based solution, managers can see the status of any project, at any time, from any location and so can our president. And our president can tell if a project has stalled, where it’s stalled and why. We simply didn’t have that information before
PCC Structurals Dave Rajkumar, IT Applications Manager
The PLM solution we chose had to adapt to our needs and processes, not the other way around. If it wasn't flexible, it wasn't going to work for us.
Gartner - Cool Vendors in Product Design and Life Cycle Management, 2010 Marc Halpern, VP Research for PLM
The annual subscription fees for support and upgrades [of Aras] are approximately 40% of what they would pay the major PLM vendors for annual maintenance, and they had no expense for PLM licenses.

As the number of seats increases to more than 5,000 users, fixed-price unlimited user subscriptions are negotiable.
Industrial Fabrication company Manufacturing Engineer
By using Aras to synchronize our production routings and quality plans, we eliminate coordination problems between the manufacturing and quality departments. Mistakes are prevented during the release of new or revised products.
Esterline Director of Engineering
I had the opportunity to work with Peter as he was first developing Aras' PLM solution, and he has continued to provide insightful direction as we expand our use of Innovator throughout the enterprise.

I am convinced that the Innovator solution is the most cost effective approach to enterprise-wide Product Lifecycle Management available today, breaking the licensing paradigm that has been typically used throughout the engineering tool arena.
PCC Structurals Dave Rajkumar, IT Applications Manager
We looked at SmarTeam, Oracle Agile and other PLM systems, but believe that Aras would be easier to customize and integrate to our existing applications.

Aras meets our business needs. The Aras PLM software suite is extremely flexible, so we can easily tailor it to our specifications, and Aras scales up really well.
Structural Concepts Corporation President and COO
The growth in our business is a direct result of our innovation and focus on quality.

The Aras solution provides us with the ability to further accelerate the pace of our innovation and the visibility we need to target areas for continuous improvement.
Global Auto Supplier IT Manager
We started using Innovator at the rev. 7.0 in 2006 and for the past 2 years successfully implemented several Innovator solutions globally .... We also have a couple custom solutions developed in Innovator that are used globally as well.
AMR Research Mike Burkett, PLM Vice President
In the PLM space, there's a place where you have to address tooling and manage all of the manufacturing documents in product revisions.

Aras has a strong focus and functionality around this hand-off to manufacturing. They have out-of-the-box tools for managing tooling and manufacturing process instructions.
École Centrale Paris Pascal
With web services and a set of AML tags, I already succeed in uploading a CAD model from CATIA V5 to the ARAS vault.

It's very simple, and I do appreciate this simplicity and the NASH interface to test some AML sets!
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
The ability of [Aras] Innovator to work seamlessly with our existing CAD platforms was a primary requirement. Significant manual manipulation of files to move data was unacceptable.
Freudenberg Project Manager
With Aras in addition to project milestone deadlines, we define our quality and economic goals and closely track each project's progress.
Industrial Motion Controls provider Quality Engineer
I have looked at your system while working at Thermo Fisher Scientific, and was very impressed with the capabilities.
Cosumer Goods company President
Our market is increasingly dynamic and competition continues to intensify so we needed a solution that is both affordable and flexible enough to easily adapt to the conditions.
CPG company Director
After an extensive review of solutions, Aras is the only one who met our business requirements and our financial objectives.
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
Our first serious thrust was in integrating our OrCAD / PADs toolchain with Aras Innovator. We extended the depth and breadth of that database by adding a rich set of parametric data - more than 40 fields of characteristics - that improved each engineer's toolset in selecting the correct part for an application from the pool.

Symbol and footprint libraries were standardized and centralized, eliminating the need to manage multiple libraries. This ensured that each of our electrical engineers designed using one correlated set of data from the initial schematic to the board layout and from the fabrication package to documentation.
Fox Electronics CEO
With Aras we will be able to manage our global supply chain more effectively.
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
The President and the COO said it was the way to go. The fact that it is free to download certainly helped, but it was Aras’s comprehensive functionality that won us over.
Varian Semiconductor Jim Sutton, Manager of IT Engineering Systems
The Aras solution is based on Microsoft .NET technology which made integration straightforward and the ownership costs are much lower than comparable systems
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
The ability to take employees with no programming skills who can’t write code and make them fully functional in Aras was critical to our success. With Aras they can create every item needed to build a functional process. No other product has this capability.
Gartner Research Director
It [Aras] addresses some of the key processes that frankly cost companies a lot of money, the ECO process, and data management. If a business gets that under control, they have made a lot of progress from where they were.
Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Jim Sutton, Engineering IT Manager
Aras had a blank piece of paper and built it the way it should be built.
Aerospace & Defense Contractor Director of Operations
At my last company we purchased a PLM package from a major player and spent well over 100K (including license, labor to set up, etc..) and never used the tool for a single day. We found Aras and had a functional and effective system in a few weeks. I was really appreciative Aras was available.
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
The ability to change processes, lifecycles and workflows, and add and remove fields to suit our needs really made it easy to tailor Aras to MiTek’s specific needs
Sonnax VP, IT
Managing the licensing and deployment of enterprise software can be a major headache for an IT organization. The Aras model lets us accurately predict our future investment and address evolving functional requirements.
Freudenberg-NOK Corporate Commodity Manager
After reviewing a variety of systems we felt that Aras Innovator was clearly superior of many dimensions including functionality, flexibility, and Total Cost of Ownership.
Industrial Engineer to Order President
Your product is awesome!
Amtech Jay Patel, President
Aras is the only PLM solution the market that is a true Web application.
CNT Vice President, Engineering
Aras gives us a highly flexible solution that can be easily modified to unify our business processes and maintain our competitive advantage.
SRC Project Engineer
By using Aras online workflow we will be reducing our cycle time and administrative costs and improving our overall manufacturing efficiencies.
Razorleaf Michael Craffey
Gone are the days when people simply accept conventional wisdom that mandated companies use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software because those companies couldn't risk an open source solution.
Electronics Supplier High Tech Executive
We started at the bottom with Aras making sure that the foundation is well-laid and easily controlled so that when a customer gains access to the Aras system, the controls are in place and the system will be efficient.
Naval Defense provider Production Engineer
Only the current revision of a process plan is available for reference in Aras. This means that we do not have to worry about the costly errors that occur when employees reference outdated materials.
ACCO Brands Bill Bucklew, Global Director of Performance Excellence
Aras Innovator is a significant reason why we’re able to expand our global market share in an increasingly competitive market.
experienced Dassault consultant ex-Smarteam Implementer
Since 1998 every PLM company has been telling us that they will eliminate the Fat client and move to pure Web... they never do it... ten years later they are all still struggling to achieve what Aras is today, TRUE Web.
High Tech Electronics company Executive
There are economic and other reasons for going step-by-step and taking a very careful, controlled-resource approach. A lot of our suppliers are in Asia and the Aras system had to be intuitive, since many of them may not be familiar with this type of PLM technology.

We have to understand it internally and then push it out on a test basis to one supplier before opening it up to the rest of our supply base.
NetworkWorld Analyst Eric Gries
Commercial [software] vendors seem more interested in feature wars than what customers actually want, and ... the commercial software sales model depends on high maintenance fees, expensive upgrades, and vendor lock-in.
Amtech Jay Patel, President
With Aras, cycle time for new product introduction goes way down -- from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days, including creation of all the APQP documentation and control plans, and failure mode analysis time
Varian Semiconductor Equipment Manager of IT Engineering Systems
The metrics in the Aras solution give us the visibility we need to direct our product and engineering change processes and enable us to meet our continuous improvement initiatives.
DataSquare Michael van Hauten, Geschäftsführer
Das außergewöhnliche Geschäftmodell von Aras bietet unseren Kunden die Möglichkeit, ohne das Risiko von Vorab-Lizenzkosten eine PLM-Lösung zu evaluieren und einzuführen
American Italian Pasta Company Chrystal Johnson, VP of IS
We looked at several solutions and Aras was the clear choice. Aras has the full range of functionality we want, the integration capabilities we need and a proven track-record.
NEMAK Victor Moreno, Project Manager
We entered into our selection process with a long list of requirements, including product data management, engineering change management, project control and oversight, cost management and APQP compliance.
Comment on Daily PLM Think Tank Blog Andy
I would not have believed the 90% reduction in TCO either before we actually did it. Zero license costs drops the bill a bunch. Very fast deployment time reduces the consulting bill a ton.

Windows look and feel drops the deployment time a bunch. (the last deployment that we did the engineering team didn't even need to be trained on the Aras tool because they were comfortable with the look and feel right from the start).

You add it all up and we've seen ECO projects that cost over $1M and took a year in TeamCenter drop to a few months and $100K in Aras.
Xerox Corp Jared Sund
Have I mentioned how cool Innovator is? ...

Can you believe I didn't have to recompile the source code or anything crazy to make this happen!

In parts of Windchill you have to recompile the java just to change a label on a text field. And, how many emails do I get from Brian noting that he will be taking the ClearQuest system down to perform schema upgrades.

Leiter des VPE an der TU Kaiserslautern und weltweit anerkannter Professor Eigner
Wir nutzen Aras Innovator vor allem deshalb, da sich die Lösung intuitiv bedienen und einfach an Prozessabläufe anpassen lässt. Aufgrund der modell-basierenden SOA-Architektur und des von Aras angebotenen Geschäftsmodells sind wir der Auffassung, dass Aras Innovator gerade für den Mittelstand eine interessante Alternative zu anderen PLM-Lösungen darstellt
Semiconductor industry company PDM Analyst
After only 1 week of having gone live with Aras, the group decided to stop using the paper system without anyone pushing them to do it.

I am very impressed by how this large group has so quickly adapted and accepted the new Aras system.
Comment posted on Daily PLM Think Tank Blog AndyF
Aras is a new way to provide PLM functionality to the business. The OSS aspect of Aras is cool, but it isn't the really important feature.

The key point is that Aras can be made to work, the other PLM solutions on the market quite frankly don't work. The value proposition is quite compelling: zero cost software that works vs. paying millions for stuff that doesn't work.
Defense Systems provider Manufacturing Engineer
Aras saves us hundreds of man-hours each year by making it very easy to create new routings and quality plans.
SRC Project Engineer
Aras gives us an effective way to collect 'as built' information during production while controlling changes to our parts lists, Bills Of Material, and manufacturing routings throughout the production process.
Amtech Jay Patel, President
With Aras, internal infrastructure is easy; I don’t have to worry about it. Allowing other people in the company to log in is easy too; I don’t have to worry about that either. And administration is trivial; Aras is the only PLM solution the market that is a true Web application.
Xerox Engineering Manager
The Aras PLM software [that] Xerox uses is a Web-based tool, built entirely on standard Internet protocols. We are really just starting to grasp the power of these new tools, and I do not believe that we fully understand the implications of having so much information available to so many people at such a low cost. If managed correctly, we should be able to improve productivity significantly by having all of the relevant information that decision makers require available to them on demand.
Gartner Marc Halpern, VP Research for PLM
Enterprise PLM solutions need to move to architectures that make customization and integration manageable.
Aerospace & Defense Systems provider Director, IT
The Aras PLM system essentially becomes a feedback system. If youre using PLM just to capture and store engineering data, then I think you're missing the boat.
Carestream Health Bruce Leidal, CIO
We're a progressive company, and we want to work with other forward-thinking companies who can help us eliminate organizational silos and increase collaborative development to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

In switching to Aras we now have a highly capable, global PLM platform that will allow us to consolidate other systems at will, increasing reuse and improving collaboration without continual capital investment in PLM licenses.
NEMAK Victor Moreno, Project Manager
We chose Aras because of demonstrated strength in both PLM and the automotive requirements.
Ogihara America Corporation of Howell, MI Dennis Henning, IT Manager
It's always a fight to maximize user licenses in the budget. Aras frees us from this constraint to growth.
experienced Dassault consultant ex-Smarteam Implementer
Aras is the future, the system is what every PLM provider has been promising for the past 10 years!
CPG company Vice President, Operations
Aras met our cost needs as well and they were definitely flexible enough and adaptable to our needs.
Carestream Health Bruce Leidal, CIO
In switching to Aras we now have a highly capable, global PLM platform that will allow us to consolidate other systems at will, increasing reuse and improving collaboration without continual capital investment in PLM licenses.
Structural Concepts Corporation Viktor Anderson, Director of Engineering
With Aras we found a practical solution that gives us insight into the performance of our product development operations we required.
Gartner - CATIA Community interview in April 2010 Marc Halpern, VP Research for PLM
Honestly if I had to make a choice I would go with an open-source system because once a customer implements it they own it entirely.
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
Aras Innovator greatly extends the concept of relationships to all supporting documents, including 3D CAD models, schematics, PCB layouts, CAM / MFG files, software, mechanical drawings, assembly instructions, test plans, photos, requirements documents, etc.
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
We expected the typical PLM system and that’s not Aras. Aras is different. They don’t do things like everyone else and it wasn’t until we saw an Aras demo that we realized what a unique and powerful solution it is.
CIMdata, Leading PLM Market Analyst Peter Bilello
The underlying technology and architecture are designed to scale to multi-site and high user-count installations to meet the requirements of larger organizations.
Varian Semiconductor Jim Sutton, Manager of IT Engineering Systems
Aras helps us manage, measure, and improve our engineering change process which accelerates our product development,
High Tech provider CEO
We have a measurably better handle on our revision controls because the Aras PLM software does it automatically. In the past, we did manual revision control which has user error and so you get documents that are not as fresh as they should be.
Large High Tech Manufacturer PLM Group Manager
We are considering replacing Windchill (our existing PLM system) and have been evaluating other PLM solutions. We started looking at Aras Innovator and so far we like it based on the functionality and pricing.
CIMdata Peter A. Bilello, Senior PLM Analyst
The phases and gates approach to project management has proven to be a very effective way to manage design and development programs in multiple industries.
ACCO President
Our market is increasingly dynamic and competition continues to intensify so we needed a solution that is both affordable and flexible enough to easily adapt to the conditions.
Phoenix International Brent Evers
I am extremely impressed to date and very pleased that we took a gamble on the open source solution.
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
In our case, in-house implementation proved to be the right vehicle because it forced us to determine - as we went along - exactly what we needed in a PLM system.

But now that we know our needs, and as our use of Aras Innovator becomes more sophisticated, we will review Aras' support services to see how they might fit our future growth of the system.
Fox Electronics Gene Trefethen, CEO
We needed improvements in our documentation because our existing ERP systems did not deal with documentation particularly well.
MiTek Corporation Kevin Friske, Database Administrator
Aras has become a workspace for R&D and a productivity enhancer for the entire company.
comment posted on Daily PLM Think Tank Blog AndyF
We switched to Aras because it worked better than any other PLM system that we had tried to use.
Areospace & Defense Manufacturer PLM Leader
The "buzz" on ARAS around here is very positive, and a lot of the folks who worked on the TeamCenter POC with me are anxious for a glimpse of what Innovator can do...
Phoenix International Brent Evers, Engineering Manager
Aras Innovator is also a real out-of-the-box solution. The rewards of implementing this robust, stable, and well-supported system are immediately tangible and we expect our PLM system to reveal even more benefits in the future.
Consumer Products provider Vice President, Operations
Aras gives us the ability to assure our stringent quality levels in a cost effective manner by coordinating our new product introductions and international operations as we scale up production volumes.
ETO Industrial Equipment provider Engineering Manager
The out-of-pocket costs to implement Aras were zero. This assumes of course that you have the hardware and software infrastructure in place to run the database application.

View More Quotes | Submit a Quote