The Need of Cost Estimating in the Implementation of Concurrent Engineering

Several developments about Concurrent Engineering (CE) are well known, in both the organizational field and technology, such as hardware compatibility and interop­erability. Yet, CE implementation is always a challenge when the information about the product/process is scarce. In this case, one of the major difficulties at the early design stages is the decision-making process, because the uncertainty affects the estimation of both performance and cost. Concerning to performance, there is a wide set of computer aided engineering systems and a vast amount of scientific knowledge that helps suitable simulation. For the cost estimating, however, the current methods are usually suitable for limited applications only. This paper makes an overview about the methods of product cost estimation during the conceptual design phase of mechanical products, and presents some guidelines to an approach to the decision-making support in the preliminary design, for some cases where the available data is scarce.