It's no secret that product designers heavily อิทธิพล life-cycle costs for their products. The ability to control cost declines sharply once the design has taken shape. However, management processes in many companies ignore this simple fact of life. In the rush to market, they fall short in considering product cost and material availability in advance of introduction. This is especially important in new technology products or products requiring infra-structure investment in the form of new plants and production equipment.An extreme example has been the U.S. defense industry. Product functionality has traditionally reigned supreme over the cost of the weapon system.As one might expect, this has led to highly capable, but very costly, weaponry. Because new weapon programs have been governed by “cost plus”
contracts, there has been little discipline over this process. In fact, the way profits are calculated, higher cost means higher profits in many cases.In an attempt to deal with this irony, the Department of Defense introduced “cost-as-an-independent-variable”
(CAIV). This mouthful, developed by the “math-centric”
defense engineering community, means cost is a design criterion on a par with technical capability. Under CAIV, a high-performing, but costly system no longer meets the specification .More and more companies team in developing new products. Several companies provide important components. If any falters, the entire development project is subject to delays. Such delays may mean a competitor blazes the trail into the market and months, or even years, of profitable sales are lost.Many a new product has been held up or rendered unmarketable by excessive costs or absence of key components. Even if recovery is feasible, nothing can drive up cost as much as a hurried push to acquire vital components.In Chapter 27, we’ll describe techniques for both product or process development that reduce cost and pain once the technology is introduced.