CAD models can do many things and provide many levels of information about an emerging product design, but they really can't tell you anything about what it might cost to manufacture said design.
The latest release from aPriori, which bills itself as a product cost management tool provider, expands the system's costing capabilities and makes it easier to use those detailed cost estimates in multisite, enterprise deployments.
aPriori 2011 R2 introduces new costing capabilities for companies
with higher-tolerance machining practices, including new baseline cost models for Mill/Turn, 5-Axis Milling, and Deburr and Inspections.
The aPriori tool is essentially a costing engine that precisely (and, officials say, instantly) determines the cost of a part or product directly from a CAD model, based on the materials to be used and the factory where it will be produced. The software is designed to help anyone in the product development process quickly understand and explore the implications of design tradeoffs on the cost of manufacturing the product. For example, if there's a change in the materials used, a product's structure is tweaked, or components are sourced from a different locale, users can input the data and have the software calculate the impact on the manufacturing costs.
This tie to CAD and the tool's geometry extraction capabilities are a big part of its story, officials told us. The tool can automatically extract properties from a CAD file. (It supports most of the popular products.) It can then populate the costing model with such parameters as radius, surface area, or number and structure of holes, unlike traditional costing solutions like spreadsheets or specialized tools, which require engineers, sourcing specialists, or tooling managers to enter a part's dimensions or characteristics manually.
Moreover, the software's other two components -- a routing engine, which is a set of rules and logic that determine how a geometry can be made, and the cost models, which crunch the numbers -- make it easier for noncosting experts to perform cost optimization analysis, according to Rick Burke, aPriori's vice president of marketing.
"A lot of systems don't have the routing engine, so a human provides input to the cost model, and that's where the need for an expert comes into play," Burke said. "Those tools can't tell you what is feasible or look at the geometry and say what is needed. Our routing engine automates this and provides input to the costing engine."
This costing tool will be helpful for designers who are cost conscious. It is also interesting that it can instantly adjust the cost of the part/product depending on materials used and the location where it is being produced.
That ability to recalculate costs based on changes to the model is indeed pretty compelling. The fact that the software automatically creates the cost model based on the actual CAD geometry is also pretty cool.
This is another piece of the puzzle, or I should say another incremental improvement of the type we're seeing from CAD vendors to broaden their products to address the full breath of the design process. Along those lines, I'd point to the ECN (product change data) capability recently added by PTC (see this story) and the parts-selection capabilities added by Siemens to its PLM portal (here).
Sometimes I feel like such a wet blanket. In addition to designing production tooling, I am resposible for estimating costs. You see advantage, while I see another club for someone who has never had to troubleshoot a worn out tool or piece of equipment to nurse it through, "Just one more run." Does this CAD program have a variable for a purchasing agent who just bought a truckload of junk steel because he got a great deal on the golf course? Is there a place to input the fact that your lubricant has been reformulated to something more friendly to the enviroment, only it doesn't work? How about the machine/feeder combination that works perfectly well at 40 strokes/minute, but misfeeds at 50 while a boss that doesn't know an Allen wrench from a small hammer screams, "Make it work. The CAD file says this part should only cost $X and it is costing $Y." Of course he will not pony up the $$ to fix either. (I no longer work for that boss.) Does this CAD program take into account how many machines are operating at one time and the air compressor is barely able to keep up. What about lot size? Am I amortizing the set-up and quality check over 1, 20 or 2 million parts?
So long as this cost is treated like an EPA mileage estimate and used for comparison purposes only, there may be a use for it, but as a final arbiter I hope I am retired before that hits the mainstream. I am not trying to be negative, but in reality a hundred variables impact on the very same part from production run to production run.
Your description of how managers misuse cost estimation tools is amusing and also sad, Tool_maker. I've also had some experiences, in a very different realm, with attempts by management to use average cost guidelines prescriptively instead of as a ballpark estimation tool like the one described in this article. Which, of course, kind of defeats the original purpose.
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