We actually do use arrangements in combo with reference sets. Its a lengthy explanation (and didn't mention because I figured others would have other reasons)but overall...
My company uses Teamcenter with a release system (so we're rev controlled)
we manufacture parts and we have operations that we release individually. They have individual operation sheets. On the sheets we show the blueprint (finished product) in phantom within the current operation to show how much stock we have left (but not on every op sheet) So will all this in mind we have come up with a particular scheme that works. (This is the second iteration. the first worked off of pure wavelinks from one op to the next, but messed up when earlier ops needed to be revised [note we don't have the extra wave lic..just the one that comes with modeling])
We create a blueprint model (finished product)
We create a starter model (like a casting,forging etc)
We create a process model. This is where all the magic happens
We create individual op files (pretty much the same exact thing but with different ref sets...u will see)
The process model contains the starter and finished model and a bunch of preset feature groups for each op.
We create arrangements that allows us to suppress both (or just the starter). we wave link in the starter model and start our first op. The following op's are extracted bodies.
For EACH OP WE CREATE A REF SET of the wave/extracted bodies, and some jobs can have a ton of op's (and new one can be added when the whole process gets Rev'd).
(you may wonder why but its easier to create a bunch of ref sets in one model rather than creating just a handful of ref sets in tons of models...)
Each individual op is created is separately as an assembly with the process model at a particular ref set (the one of its op) and arrangement (depending whether or not we want to show the finished model in phantom).
So..... over all if we have a lot of operations for a particular job we can have a lot of reference sets that we can not sort/reorder. If I have to add an op in the beginning and the process model has a ton of op's then I'm stuck with it on the bottom = not cool!