Data-driven through-life costing to support product lifecycle management solutions in innovative product development

Innovative product usually refers to product that comprises of creativity and new ideas. In the development of such a new product, there is often a lack of historical knowledge and data available to be used to perform cost estimation accurately. This is due to the fact that traditional cost estimation methods are used to predict costs only after a product model has been built, and not at an early design stage when there is little data and information available. In light of this, original equipment manufacturers are also facing critical challenges of becoming globally competitive and increasing demands from customer for continuous innovation. To alleviate these situations this research has identified a new approach to cost modelling with the inclusion of product lifecycle management solutions to address innovative product development.The aim of this paper, therefore, is to discuss methods of developing an extended-enterprise data-driven through-life cost estimating method for innovative product development

Through life costing in defence electronic systems: an integrated data-driven multi-level approach

Cost estimating is a business process that is critical to the defence sector, where many products have low volumes and long life cycles. The nature of a defence system is often unique (for example, a naval platform) which consists of a number of sub-systems and components. For the design of such a system cost estimating is a critical task, in particular the requirement to predict the cost throughout the systems lifetime. The aim of this paper therefore is to discuss an integrated approach that provides a general framework for through life costing in defence systems via the development of: (1) a generic data library to support designers and cost estimators, (2) data searching and transfer mechanisms to support a top-down and bottom-up hybrid cost modelling approach, (3) capturing reliability data to support product services. The paper is divided into several sections, first, a review of relevant research projects concerning integration and data capture for cost modelling. This is followed by a section, which highlights problems of performing cost estimates for low volume products, and subsequently the proposed solution, methods of cost estimation and example applications. Perhaps most importantly, the methods created in this research are able to enhance decision-making and accelerate the responsiveness of the business bidding process

Cost engineering for manufacturing: current and future research

The article aims to identify the scientific challenges and point out future research directions on Cost Engineering. The research areas covered in this article include Design Cost; Manufacturing Cost; Operating Cost; Life Cycle Cost; Risk and Uncertainty management and Affordability Engineering. Collected information at the Academic Forum on Cost Engineering held at Cranfield University in 2008 and further literature review findings are presented. The forum set the scope of the Cost Engineering research, a brainstorming was held on the forum and literatures were further reviewed to understand the current and future practices in cost engineering. The main benefits of the article include coverage of the current research on cost engineering from different perspectives and the future research areas on Cost Engineering