Selecting a virtual production environment (VPE)
A Virtual Production Environment (VPE) represents a manufacturing facility. aPriori provides a set of Starting Point VPEs representing average costs of manufacturing in various geographic regions. The elements that make up Starting Point VPEs, aPriori Manufacturing Cost Models and aPriori Regional Data Libraries, are separately licensed. Additionally, you may configure a VPE to represent your in-house manufacturing environment and cost structure or a supplier’s manufacturing environment and cost structure.
By default, aPriori selects VPEs automatically (depending on how your installation is configured). For certain process steps you can display the current VPE details and manually select a different VPE (to determine the cost of performing them at a different facility with different manufacturing capabilities and cost structures). If the VPE commands are not available for a process step, they are disabled on the menu.
To display VPE details
1 In the Manufacturing Process pane select Edit > Show VPE Details or right-click on the process step and select Show VPE Details. The VPE Details window appears, containing information and usage notes about the VPE, its groups and processes, and a log/description of changes made to the VPE over time.
2 To select a different VPE, click Edit.
To close the VPE Details, click Close.
To select a VPE
1 In the Manufacturing Process pane select
Edit >
VPE Selection or right-click on a process step and select
VPE Selection. The VPE Selection window displays. (You can also select a VPE from the
Basic Options section of the
Cost Guide, as described in
Initial costing: The Cost Guide on page
1.)
2 Click the User Select button.
3 Select a VPE from the list.
4 Click Ok to apply changes, recalculate the Fully Burdened Cost, and close the VPE Selection window; or click Apply to apply changes and recalculate the cost without leaving the VPE Selection window.
A status indicator shows the costing status of the input:
• Green — Costing completed with the requested input.
• Yellow — Costing completed with warnings. Typically, indicates that the requested input was invalid and a different input, based on selection policy, was used for costing.
• Red — Costing failed.
You can see the warnings in the Status Messages pane.