Key New Capabilities

aPriori Professional 2019 R2 introduces several significant new capabilities.

• A new Extrusions cost model for estimating the cost of parts made from custom Aluminum extrusion profiles. It accounts for the cost of manufacturing the custom extrudates themselves, as well as the sawing, punching, and machining operations needed to remove material and any bending operations needed to produce the finished part. This initial release is intended for parts which have light-to-moderate amounts of material removal.

For more information, please refer to the section Extrusions / Bar & Tube Fabrication Cost Model Enhancements later in this document.

• A new Composites cost model is available for estimating the manufacturing cost of parts made from continuous fiber-reinforced composite materials. The initial release is targeted at part types, material types, and layup processes common to the aerospace industry. The cost model supports both solid laminate parts and sandwich-structure parts containing honeycomb cores, made with thermoset resin materials (epoxy and phenolics).

For more information, please refer to the section Composites Cost Model Enhancements later in this document.

• aPriori 2019 R2 provides a new approach for managing and updating the Labor Rate data which is used to calculate Labor Costs for all process cost models. This enhancement enables VPE Administrators to update labor rates much more quickly and easily than was possible in previous releases and provides end users more insight into the assumptions which drive labor rates.

Previously, the Labor Rate field for every machine for every process had to be populated and managed individually. Updating the labor rates for an entire VPE therefore required entering updated values for thousands of machines, even though typically many or all the machines for the same process use the same labor rate value. Indeed, typically there are less than 20 unique labor rate values across a VPE. Now, labor rate management is greatly centralized and streamlined through the use of several new VPE tables.

For more information about this enhancement, please refer to the section VPE Management and Configuration Enhancements section, later in this document.