Mechanical Engineering

Maximizing Value Across a Product Family

Maximizing Value Across a Product Family

Design approaches to maximize product value while minimizing capital and unit costs.

What can be done to improve a family of products while reducing both unit costs and the cost of tooling (non-recurring engineering & capital investment)?  Here we discuss critical steps, planning options and design approaches needed to make the most of developing a family of products. 

Changing Your Manufacturing Strategy

When should you invest in tooling to reduce unit manufacturing costs?

The decision to invest in tooling for the purpose of driving down manufacturing costs is different for every product, company and market.  Quite often, when launching a new product or entering a new market, a risk averse design approach is taken that requires little or no tooling investment.  Three things must be considered when determining how to approach design and manufacturing strategies:

  1. The competitive unit price of the product for the intended market.
  2. The level of risk perceived for entering a new market with a new product.
  3. A tooling investment vs. unit cost at projected product volumes analysis to determine the most cost effective approach.

Need to Reduce your Cost of Goods?

But you don’t have the production volume to invest in tooling.

Sometimes even incremental increases in production volume can open up opportunities for cost reductions.  The following example shows how creative thinking and a hard look at what your customers value can drive down the cost of goods (COGS) with only a minimal increase in production volumes.