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Cockpit For Enterprise Cost Management
Managing and predicting cost and weight is key to successful product development. Using Cockpit for Enterprise Cost Management™ (ECM), product development teams manage cost and weight from the first proposal through the engineering change process in manufacturing. Cockpit ECM utilizes a work breakdown concept to manage cost estimates, cost applications, weight estimates, and related data. It also gives cost analysts, engineers, and program managers access to the necessary tools to report, analyze, and manage product/program status. Cockpit ECM manages product development initiatives that contain the impact of future design changes on cost and/or weight. Cockpit ECM links to the Cockpit requirements and parameter tree assisting in critical parameter management.
Cockpit ECM is easily deployed across a geographically dispersed environment through a data server(s), multiple clients, web access, and interfaces to various types of cost tools and data sources.
Cockpit ECM is easily deployed across a geographically dispersed environment through a data server(s), multiple clients, web access, and interfaces to various types of cost tools and data sources.
Managing product cost and weight requires daily attention by engineers, designers, cost estimators, manufacturing specialists, and managers. Cockpit ECM uses a work breakdown structure created by the engineering team or extracted from a corporate database or PDM and assigns bid or target costs and weights. Internal and external costing tools are launched to update the cost for any line item. Existing cost and weight data is accessed on-line or imported using standard interface formats. Standard and custom searches and reports provide real time access to the latest estimates, forecasts, variances, and impact of initiatives. Learning curves and cost escalation are included when applicable.
Every project or part has a unique structure, configuration, set of tasks, and/or set of sub-assemblies. A user may drag and drop parts onto each other to create a hierarchy by hand or import an entire hierarchy from an external source. Process plan hierarchies are created the same way as product hierarchies with the line items being operations, rather than physical parts. Project and program hierarchies include parts, tasks, and any other item with either a cost or weight estimate.
Cost and weight estimates are continuously refined over the life of a program. As improved information becomes available, the fidelity of the estimates improves. Cockpit ECM stores both the current and prior estimates, including estimates made using different assumptions. A collection of the estimates is kept with each item in the system. In addition, the assumptions, input data, and tool used to create the estimate are also stored in Cockpit ECM, providing excellent auditing and traceability. Cost estimates and cost contributors may be stored in multiple currencies.
The combination of a structure and its associated cost and/or weight estimates constitute a Scenario. The users control the specific estimates used in a Scenario. The choice of which estimate to use is eased by exploiting Cockpit ECM search tools. A user specifies estimate creation date, name, type, status, or production year as search criteria. The matching estimate for each Scenario line item is automatically selected. The user can also specify a specific estimate be used for any line item.
Meeting Cost Targets Is As Important As Meeitng Performance Targets - Let Cognition Help You Do Both
Enterprise Wide Cost Management
Part Hierarchy
Multiple Estimates For Each Item
Cost Based "What If" Scenarios
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Traceability
Users interrogate the cost data including material, labor, and ODC cost contributors. Cockpit ECM manages access to cost models, even external cost modeling software. Users can start integrated cost tools to further query the assumptions underlying the cost estimate. In summary, all the necessary input to arrive at a cost are kept as a trace of the cost estimate.
Variants
In addition to changing assumptions for creating different scenarios, a user may wish to add to or subtract items from the hierarchy creating a modified structure, or variant. The user then creates a scenario based on a variant.
Initiatives
Funded activities that will change cost or weight in the future are called Initiatives. Initiatives complete the story of where I stand today, what is my target, and what am I doing about it. Initiatives record what is being done to eliminate a forecasted variance. Initiatives are priced structures stored in Cockpit ECM that contain the items that will be affected by the Initiative and the change in cost and weight as a result of the Initiative activity. Initiatives also store their effective date, funding requirements, and risk.
Rapid searches
Exploiting the internal mapping capability of Cockpit ECM, items may be found rapidly, independent of the size of the database. Rapid searches are available for part name, part number, family, and function.
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Security, Publication and Change History
Elements, estimates, and scenarios are subject to security control. A user may explicitly indicate those user groups with whom he wishes to share his data and how he wishes to share the data. The states include work-in process, published read only, published read-write, submitted for approval, and approved. Items subject to security have an owner (the last person to have modified the item), an author (the creator), and a set of group memberships.
Change history records are kept for each change made to a Scenario. The date, author, reason, and amount of change are stored for analysis.
Change history records are kept for each change made to a Scenario. The date, author, reason, and amount of change are stored for analysis.
Integration with various Costing Tools
Virtually any external costing tool can be added to ECM. A variety of standard interface templates are provided with Cockpit ECM, including Scenario export in XML format. Direct integration is available for a number of popular costing tools such as SEER DFM™, PriceH™, and various Microsoft products via ActiveX.
Cockpit ECM supports multiple data views including web, structure, table, icon, link, and form view. Data can be exported to spreadsheets for further analysis and report generation. The application supports CORBA, OLE/COM, XML/HTML access, intelligent agents, and floating licenses.
Cockpit ECM supports multiple data views including web, structure, table, icon, link, and form view. Data can be exported to spreadsheets for further analysis and report generation. The application supports CORBA, OLE/COM, XML/HTML access, intelligent agents, and floating licenses.
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Cost Management Engineers can use costing capabilities built into the Cockpit to estimate the product cost and track the cost impact of any changes. Cognition’s Enterprise Cost Management (ECM) tool is also integrated into the Cockpit to allow costing of even the most complex product structures. ECM is being used by customers to estimate cost structures containing more than 2500,000 elements. ECM allows creation of any number of cost scenarios, comparing the various scenarios, and tracking scenario values versus the product target costs. ECM supports any internal costing process and is easy linked to any existing costing applications.
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copyright 2009 Cognition Corporation and are used here by permission | Terms of use | Privacy Policy
copyright 2009 Cognition Corporation and are used here by permission | Terms of use | Privacy Policy