Automated design-to-cost: Integrating costing into the design decision

While the concepts of design for manufacturability and concurrent engineering have made significant advances in integrating the design function with other areas in the firm, there are still major gaps in timely and accurate costing information available to designers. Our research develops a conceptual model and working prototype of a new application for blending product design and cost accounting, that of automated design-to-cost. The purpose of the application is to provide rapid and dynamic feedback during the design process regarding estimated final product cost of a new part design. The system first calculates the cost of a new part design directly from existing computer-aided design, accounting, and other computer-integrated manufacturing databases. It then finds and displays, along with their costs, all existing parts that are similar or 'near' to the proposed part. The model developed was successfully implemented as a prototype. It is able to integrate and process information from the diverse databases of feature-based modelling computer-aided design, group technology classification, computer-aided process planning and activity-based costing.