Product Factors that Influence Cost
There are three main product factors that influence costs in the aPriori product. They are:
• GCD Extraction: Geometry that aPriori extracts from CAD parts that are inputs to costing
• Cost Engine: The engine that interprets the cost model intent and design to produce a cost
• Cost Models: The mathematical models that calculate cycle times and costs from both geometry and VPE inputs
When an assessment is made to whether a particular product change will impact cost, the above factors are considered. Both GCD Extraction and the Cost Engine are considered part of the aPriori Costing Platform and are common for all Cost Models and VPEs that are deployed on that aPriori release. These components are not versioned.
Cost Models are versioned by a Cost Model Version (CMV) number. Every aPriori Baseline or Configured VPE that has been built always declares a CMV and aPriori always maintains backwards compatibility with every CMV that has ever shipped. Versioning cost models allows aPriori to make improvements to newer cost models, while guarding against changing the behavior of previously-configured customer VPEs. Customers can leverage these improvements in upcoming upgrade activities on their own timeframe.
aPriori always upgrades the CMV of its Baseline VPEs when substantial improvements are made to a cost model and the Baselines always ship with the latest CMV being active. The following illustrates this concept using the Sheet Metal cost model as an example. In this example, a customer VPE was built against CMV2, but the latest shipping CMV for Sheet Metal is CMV3:
• The above interplay is what drives the impact assessment to cost estimates when a customer upgrades to the next release.
• If changes to the aPriori Costing Platform have occurred, then regardless of CMV, these changes will impact upgrade. The extent of impact will depend on the change, but sometimes changes are additive; existing cost models would not fail since their logic doesn’t account for this additive nature.
• If no changes in the aPriori Costing platform exist, then we need to review the changes in Cost Model Versioning and review where changes have occurred. If changes are localized to only the latest CMV, then there is no impact to upgrade for configured VPEs.
• The next section outlines the decision flow for assessing impact to upgrade.