CRIT Insight: LeanCOST

Interview with Jessica Moretti, Sales Specialist at Hyperlean, about LeanCOST, the software platform that simplifies the costs estimate.

Jessica, who is Hyperlean and what is LeanCOST intended for?

Hyperlean is a company located in Ancona that provides innovative software systems to support planning and management of the corporate know-how, concerning timing and costs estimate. Today, Hyperlean has 30 team members and, relying on a worldwide network of partners and retailers, provides its services to large industrial groups of the Machines, Automation, Automotive, Plant building, Oil&Gas and Aviation sectors.

LeanCOST is the name of the software solution entirely developed by Hyperlean with an exclusively Made in Italy technology. Indeed, Hyperlean and LeanCOST originate from the collaboration between BIESSE GROUP, a leading Italian company in the advanced mechanics for the furniture industry, and Università Politecnica delle Marche, a university campus of excellence. In 2010, a team of six researchers from this university started to work together to develop software systems capable of reducing the time for cost estimate and production of industrial products and processes.

To reduce the time for industrial cost estimate and production? It sounds like a powerful product. Who will be the end user and how is it supposed to work?

LeanCOST is intended for those manufacturing industries that need to know the cost of products they design and produce.

In the manufacturing field it is known that approximately 80% of the final cost of a product can be determined in the early stages of its design. Knowing this impact on the final cost allows to choose the most convenient solution and ensures the greatest return.

LeanCOST allows the evaluation of timing and costs at the product life cycle early stages so that the target cost will be respected. This activity requires highly skilled people and in many companies it is still carried on with unsuitable tools (i.e. by hand or with Excel sheets) thus, causing delays and a lower reliability of the results.

LeanCOST is a software system that automatically imports the product codes from the CAD projects or STEP file and returns a clear data base of timings and costs distributed into cost centers. Moreover, LeanCOST is provided with a complete and customized database of processes, raw materials and machines that allows the automation of several activities, granting quick and reliable results.

Which companies are actually using LeanCOST? Who is it intended for?

To this day, LeanCOST counts more than 600 users, in 12 countries all over the world, among which developers, technical offices, cost engineers, industrialization and sales offices. The unique working method and the standard report templates that can be shared with other business segments, allow for a substantial speed up in costs, bringing several advantages to the working routine. Moreover, thanks to LeanCOST, the development areas of the company become aware of the cost estimation challenge and the communication among different areas improves. Finally timing and cost data become integral part of the product history within ERP, PDM and PLM systems.

LeanCOST is an essential tool for any customer or supplier manufacturing company which focuses its business on technologies and processes of carpentry, mechanics, injection molding, die casting of aluminum and end-of-cycle treatments.

It is clearly a great intuition, is there no other option available on the market?

To this day, there are few software capable of managing the entire costs estimate calculation process from the CAD project to its exportation to other management and document-based systems.

These are the distinctive features that make LeanCOST the ultimate Italian product in the costs estimate:

• immediate price quotation from the CAD-generated model
• evaluation of the costs with several different and combined technologies
• precompiled database of raw material machines, processes for the Italian, East European, Indian and Chinese markets
• costs simulation depending on the quantities and calculation of the economic plot
• import of the assemblies, BOM generation and automatic cost calculation
• detailed PDF report documents and customizable Excel files

Moreover, HyperLean offers a complete support service: from specialized staff training courses to mentorship programs during the early phases of the project, from customization of the software depending on the client’s specifications to consultancy on the Design to Cost and Should Cost, granting an IT and an after sales continuous support, within national and international territory.

You mentioned before the version number 9, what is the novelty?

Every year, Hyperlean releases new versions of the system to improve its functionalities, usability and to make sure that the product is compliant with the requested standard. The improvements are the results of ideas and suggestions coming form the end users of LeanCOST guaranteeing performance and productivity. In order to minimize the number of clicks from the end user, the most recent version released, number 9, has a totally renewed interface. Thanks to the large number of collaborations with the customers, the processes of injection molding and die-casting have been added. Finally, with this last edition, LeanCOST will be able to perform economic evaluations also on foreign markets through the new databases available for Poland, India and China.

What about the future? What can we expect from Hyperlean?

The Hyperlean development team is already working on the next edition outbound in 2018. This version will bring the software on a cloud platform with all the advantages associated with this technology. With a view to the internationalization towards foreign markets, a new German language edition it is expected to be released (the English version is already available). Finally, LeanCOST Educational is the name of the last goal achieved. It is intended for teachers and students of Secondary schools, University and Training Centers. “We believe that LeanCOST can be a valid support for students to deepen their studies and gain a fuller education in view of their contact and entrance within the labor work”. Hyperlean is waiting for you at the MECSPE – Parma 2018.

For further information on Hyperlean and LeanCOST please refer to info@crit-research.it