Details: Changes to Baselines that DO NOT affect Customer VPEs
The following changes are available in the aPriori Baseline VPEs only. If you wish to take advantage of these new capabilities, the VPE needs to be upgraded to the most recent Cost Model version. Please contact your VPE Admin or aPriori Account Manager to plan work.
• Material Cost and Scrap Credit: In previous releases, the cost model always assumed that material scrap (for example, trim scrap) and part scrap (material from scrapped parts) was not sold for credit. In this release, the same assumption is made by default in starting point VPEs, but VPE administrators can enable scrap credit by default with the cost model variables enableScrapMaterialCredit and enableScrapPartCredit. In addition, users can override the default on a per-part basis with the setup options Enable Scrap Material Credit and Enable Scrap Part Credit.
If material scrap credit and/or part scrap credit is enabled, utilization increases and material cost decreases. Part scrap credit includes credit for parts scrapped by this process as well as by downstream processes. The credit rate is specified as a percentage of the material rate by the material property Scrap Cost Percent.
• Required Shear Force: In previous releases, required shear force was always calculated on the assumption that cluster punching was not used (that is, on the assumption of a single shear plane, with all GCDs pressed at the same time). In this release, the same assumption is made by default in starting point VPEs, but VPE administrators can customize the default number of shear planes with the cost model variable numShearPlanes. In addition, users can override the default on a per-part basis with the setup option Number of Shear Planes.
Multiple shear planes indicate the use of cluster punching, with different groups of GCDs pressed in a staggered fashion, rather than simultaneously. Required press force decreases as the number of shear planes increases. A decrease in required press force can sometimes lower costs due to selection of a lower-overhead machine.
• Press Cycle Time and New Machine Property Strokes Per Minute: This release introduces the new machine property Strokes Per Minute. During costing, this new field is used to compute press cycle time. In previous releases, press cycle time was taken directly from the machine property Press Cycle Time.
For a few machines, the computed value for press cycle time differs somewhat from the machine property (Press Cycle Time) used in previous releases. As a result, cycle time for these machines might go up between 0 and 60% or down between 0 and 90%.
Note that, in this release, if Strokes Per Minute is not populated for the current machine, the cost model uses the machine property Press Cycle Time (which is now hidden by default in machine property displays).
• Tooling Cost and Tool Life: In previous releases, tooling cost calculations assumed that a single tool lasts long enough to produce the production volume specified in any scenario. In this release, the cost model estimates the number of parts that can be produced with a given tool before it wears to the point that it needs to be replaced. Based on that estimate, the cost model determines the number of tools required to manufacture the specified production volume, and accounts for that number of tools in total hard tooling cost.
Tool life is accounted for in the tooling cost calculations for the following processes:
o Transfer Die
o Offline Blanking
Tool-life estimation is based on part material, tool material, and tool coating type. For a given costing, either the formula Dependencies or Investment tab displays the number of tools assumed by tooling cost calculations.
With default production volumes (5,500 parts annually for 5 years), hard tooling cost is not affected by this change, as only one tool is required. With production volumes that require multiple tools, hard tooling cost increases compared to previous releases.
• Improved Estimation of Tool Coating and Tool Heat Treatment Costs: this release includes improved data for tool material density, tool material unit cost, and tool coating unit cost. As a result, hard tooling cost has been observed to increase by an average of 2%-3%, compared to the previous release.