And, that’s not the only benefit digital manufacturing simulation can bring to cost engineers; whether you are on a large team, or if you are part of a two-person team at a machining shop trying to keep up with new quote requests from your customers. For years and years, the manufacturing and cost analysis process has consisted of designers and engineering departments throwing a new design over the wall with only days left until product launch, and now you are under the gun to analyze a complex design with not nearly enough time to get it done. What if you could project your cost expertise across the company so that the designers and engineers – the folks responsible for creating cost – had the capability to a first-order analysis of manufacturability and eliminate some of the more obvious problems before they ever got to you. Again, impossible you say? With digital manufacturing simulation software this is a reality that you can achieve.

Your underfunded and understaffed cost departments consistently try to keep pace with product designers that are 10x or more the size of their department. And while expectations to reduce costs for the company increases, there is still a heavy reliance on outdated cost estimation technology and homegrown costing systems to meet growing demands. It’s about time cost engineering teams had a tool of their own.