CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
8 March 2005
Product News
aPriori Unveils v3.7 of its Cost Management Platform to Aid Manufacturers in Reducing Costs of Goods and Improving Product Margins
aPriori, a supplier of cost management software solutions for the discrete manufacturing industry, announced the availability of version 3.7 of the aPriori cost management platform. With today's announcement, aPriori brings much-needed innovation to the discrete manufacturing industry by allowing Fortune 100 manufacturing companies to significantly reduce costs and improve margins by accurately measuring, controlling and reducing cost of goods sold (COGS) throughout the entire product development process. Also announced today, aPriori has partnered with PTC® . By integrating its cost management platform with PTC solutions, aPriori can provide manufacturing companies utilizing PTC solutions with unprecedented access to vital product cost information early in the product development process.
By providing real-time, predictive costs assessment throughout the entire product development process, aPriori v3.7 allows designers, manufacturing engineers, purchasing professionals, cost managers and program / project management to make better decisions to reduce, avoid and recover product costs. aPriori's solution, currently in production with a Fortune 100 manufacturer, allows companies to reduce COGS by whole percentages by identifying quantifiable savings in material, tooling, labor and overhead while evaluating alternative designs, processes and sources.
"Discrete manufacturing companies are faced with competing demands for engineering productivity, faster time to market, improved product quality, and lower product costs," said Michael Campbell, vice president of product management for PTC. "aPriori provides solutions that enable our customers to gain visibility and exposure to product costs early in the product development process before critical decisions that drive costs are made."
Version 3.7 allows companies to meet key business objectives by addressing product costs across a broad range of users within the organization, via:
• Predictive real-time cost assessments provide designers "what-if" cost trade-off analysis from component to product level within the MCAD environment
• Deterministic routings for lowest cost production down to machine level for an unlimited number of factories allow manufacturing professionals to explore cost saving alternatives
• Out-of-the-box aPriori time/cost models address the most common manufacturing processes with customizable models to support unique customer-specific processes
• Advanced 'should-cost' analysis incorporates cost estimates for in-house facilities and generic industry production plants to enable more efficient supplier selection and fact-based negotiations
• Web-based interface offers managers on-demand production-level cost roll-ups linked directly to design, manufacturing and sourcing
"Traditional cost estimation techniques are time-intensive and immediately invalidated whenever a design, manufacturing, or procurement assumption is changed," said Michael Philpott, Ph.D., Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois, founder and CTO of aPriori. "aPriori's real-time, CAD-integrated cost management platform empowers designers, manufacturing engineers, procurement professionals, and management to make informed decisions to reduce, avoid, or recover product costs at any stage of the product lifecycle. Version 3.7 is the capstone of over nine calendar years of research and development in collaboration with a leading Fortune 100 manufacturer."
Pricing and Availability
aPriori version 3.7 is available now and is currently in production trials with several Fortune 100 manufacturing companies. For more information visit http://www.apriori.com .
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