Software keeps the score on design costs

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 3, 2002

DFM Concurrent Costing 2.0 enables engineering organisations and their supply chains to take a multidisciplinary approach to cost assessment early in product design.

DFM Concurrent Costing 2.0 enables engineering organisations and their supply chains to take a multidisciplinary approach to cost assessment early in product design.

DFM software from Boothroyd Dewhurst identifies the major cost drivers associated with manufacturing and finishing parts.

Cost-estimating activity during design encourages engineers to choose the most cost-effective shape-forming process for a part and to consider how individual part features might be modified to optimise manufacturing costs.

A key benefit of DFM software is the quick generation of an initial cost estimate at any stage of design in just a few simple steps.

"OEMs and their suppliers are increasingly turning to should-cost analysis to take costs out of products and get to market faster", says John Gilligan, president and CEO of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc.

"Our customers' design teams today cross organisational boundaries and include multiple engineering disciplines and supplier partners, so they find systematic DFM cost analysis fundamental to decision making".

"In addition to utilising the software for evaluating the cost of internally produced parts, we are leveraging the very special relationships developed with our suppliers and now have a program underway with 15 of them to analyse current parts in order to accurately estimate the cost of future designs", says Cheryl Wood, an engineer and new-product cost analyst at Harley-Davidson Motor Company.

"At the core of this program is our understanding that real savings come from helping suppliers reduce the cost of materials and improve the manufacturability of their designs.

Boothroyd-Dewhurst software accurately models part costs, providing a quantitative basis for evaluating competing design alternatives".

DFM Concurrent Costing 2.0 offers many useful tools to help achieve cost-effective, highly manufacturable products.

Engineers can learn about different materials and processes and evaluate competing part designs down into the cost details of machining setups and custom finishing.

The new software offers an expanded amount of information on material and manufacturing processes, adding improved versions of Boothroyd Dewhurst's formerly stand alone cost models for sheet metalworking and machining to cost models for plastic injection moulding and diecasting and powder metals.

The updated DFM software gives designers a comprehensive understanding of the costs to manufacture parts by means of turret pressworking, laser and plasma cutting, sheet metal stamping with a variety of dies, machining, structural foam moulding, plastic extrusion, injection moulding, thermoforming, blow moulding, cold and hot die casting, hot forging, powder metal processing, sand casting, and investment casting.

The software also features a completely new cost model for producing parts using metal injection moulding.

DFM Concurrent Costing 2.0 includes a new machine library, which provides machine characteristics and process rates, and fields for adding pictures of equipment and descriptive notes.

Machine operation times and tooling costs can be edited, and the library can be expanded and fully customised to add categories of information specific to the manufacturing location.

As in previous versions of DFM software, a thorough help system illustrated with graphics explains the details of all shape-forming processes and operations.

Two new report formats generate customised analysis results for engineers to print out and distribute for review.

If desired, engineers can use 3D part geometry data for cost estimating by importing solid models into DFM Concurrent Costing from all the major CAD/CAM software systems, including Pro/Engineer, Catia, Unigraphics, I-Deas, AutoCad, SolidWorks, and many others.

Import of part geometry data, and STL, DXF, OBJ, IGES, and VRML files, is supported by the SolidView/Pro 3D viewer from Solid Concepts.

DFM Concurrent Costing 2.0 operates in Microsoft Windows 95, 98 and NT.