aPriori v5.5 Enterprise Cost Management Platform Reduces Cost of Goods Sold for Discrete Manufacturing Organizations

CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

4 December 2007

Product News

aPriori v5.5 Enterprise Cost Management Platform Reduces Cost of Goods Sold for Discrete Manufacturing Organizations

aPriori announced the availability of aPriori v5.5, the newest version of its Enterprise Cost Management software platform . With capabilities that provide real-time, predictive and precise product cost assessments throughout the development and delivery process, aPriori v5.5 empowers manufacturing organizations to significantly reduce cost of goods sold (COGS) by identifying quantifiable savings in material, tooling, labor and overhead while evaluating alternative designs, processes and sources.

The aPriori Enterprise Cost Management platform is patented technology that generates product cost assessments in real-time as a product is being developed. Direct integration to industry-standard CAD solutions allows aPriori to calculate product costs every time a designer makes a change to a model. aPriori's Virtual Production Environments capture the characteristics (processes, machines, cost structure) of a customer's (and/or a supplier's) factories to determine manufacturing or sourcing costs. Combined with innovative routing capabilities, aPriori automatically determines the lowest-cost production method, and provides users with capabilities to model multiple product-cost scenarios.

"aPriori generates precise cost assessments throughout the entire product development process to provide discrete manufacturing and product companies with new levels of visibility into the true costs of their products," said Eric Arno Hiller, Founder and Chief Product Officer at aPriori. "With the ability to better understand and manage product costs, aPriori customers are driving costs out of their products prior to production, significantly reducing costs of goods sold and improving overall financial results."

"In a very competitive market, achieving cost targets at product launch is a high priority. By having helped JLG capture significant savings in new and existing parts to date, aPriori has proven that it can help us achieve lower-cost product designs and avoid post-launch cost reduction programs," said Wayne MacDonald, Senior Vice President, Engineering at JLG Industries. "The new sand casting capabilities in aPriori v5.5 will enable us to drive cost out of new product designs as well as aid in the conversion of existing fabricated parts to castings."

New capabilities in aPriori v5.5 include:

Sand Casting - aPriori v5.5 adds Sand Casting support to its stable of rigorous, physics-based process models. With this new family of process models, aPriori has improved its ability to assess the cost of sand-cast products. The new Sand Casting module supports a variety of Sand Casting mold-making methods and a number of discrete Sand Casting sub-processes including material melting, core making, pouring, cooling/solidification, shake-out, cleaning, finishing and in-line inspection.

Tolerance and Roughness - Users understand the cost implications of tolerance and roughness specification. aPriori extracts tolerance and roughness information directly from the CAD model and generates cost assessments using these parameters.

Cross-Facility Costing - With aPriori v5.5, organizations can compute the costs for a single component manufactured across multiple internal or supplier factories.

Enhanced Cost Analysis & Scenario Modeling - To improve sourcing decision-support, aPriori includes powerful scenario modeling and reporting capabilities for performing detailed analysis/comparisons between aPriori-costed parts and/or assemblies, third-party quotes and historical costing data. aPriori's configurable, spreadsheet-like interface allows users to focus on the cost metrics that are relevant to the current decision.

How to Drive Costs Out of Your Products Before Production

Join aPriori on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 2 PM EDT for a one hour webinar on Enterprise Cost Management, next-generation capabilities for generating precise, repeatable and relevant product cost assessments in real-time from design through production. Featuring the aPriori v5.5 Enterprise Cost Management Platform, this webinar will outline how manufacturing firms can:

• Generate precise, repeatable and relevant product cost assessments in real-time from design through production

• Measurably reduce product costs and Cost of Goods Sold to improve financial results

To register for the aPriori webinar, go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/968607751 or visit http://www.apriori.com/ .

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