Designing for Producibility: Design-Influenced Production Cost Program

Whether or not a product is producible is largely determined during the initial design phase. Further, producibility can usually be measured in terms of cost, which is the approach in this paper.

Presented here is a plan for tracking and controlling the end-product costs which are influenced by design decisions, while those decisions are being made. This is accomplished by creating accurate cost targets at the beginning of design, from base-cost modules established prior to design, then tracking the influence of design decisions against those targets as the design progresses. The key here is the technique of rapidly creating the cost targets.