Design to Cost

The development of innovative and high quality products cannot ignore the consideration of all the factors that will influence product’s life from the earliest stages of design.

Aspects such as function, performance, aesthetics and cost have always been the drivers that guided the design, today they must be added many other elements such as environmental sustainability, maintainability, end-of-life management, etc.

In essence, we have now moved on to what is called product life-cycle design. Consequently, those who develop these products must manage a considerable amount of data and information in an efficient and effective manner, which together, if well analyzed, can lead to making the best design decisions among the various possible alternatives. Methods and tools that facilitate these processes become indispensable.

From the point of view of the “cost” driver, an approach that is not new but that in these moments of economic crisis is undergoing a considerable rediscovery is the Design-to-Cost, meaning for it the set of methods and tools that can be implemented for estimate the production cost accurately and quickly from the early stages of design.

This approach allows to analyze the design solutions and reach the best compromise between satisfaction of the technical specifications and product cost. One element not to be overlooked in the Design-to-Cost to maximize the benefits is the proactive and synergistic involvement of the supply chain. The application in the manufacturing sector is spreading rapidly, thanks also to IT solutions that make it easy to put the principles underlying the approach into practice.

The roundtable, organized by CRIT, has the purpose of allowing the companies of the Club of Innovators to confront each other on the subject and to evaluate the benefits and criticalities of this approach.

All participating companies are invited to bring their experience on the subject in question.