When we take on an ambitious cost-cutting project, the ProWerk Cost Navigator is one of our tools. The ProWerk Cost Navigator is an interdisciplinary software tool which extrapolates the total cost of manufacture of the product or plant at every point during its development.
In contrast to your business software, e.g. SAP, the ProWerk Cost Navigator can even be used when the cost-savings potential is especially high, i.e. during the brainstorming phase and in the early stages of development. It is easy to discard a poor idea, but it is immensely costly and time-consuming to optimise an overexpensive prototype.
All personnel involved in development, including external engineering consultants plus the process planning and purchasing departments, feed data on the costs and schedules of the components or subassemblies they handle continuously into the costs navigator. The data undergoes multiple compression and provides the management with an up-to-date overview of the status of the project at all times, and hence enables intervention at an early stage in the event of erroneous developments.
The costs navigator remains active as a monitoring tool until your cost accounting personnel can add this process to your business software.