New Concepts in General Modelization for Hardware

Summary

The electro-mechanical industry was, due to the amount of data collected for generations in this industry, the first one who saw the emergence of general models.

We already presented, in Chapter 11, “Value Estimator” (VE) which was used as an example in order to introduce the concept of general models.

The purpose of this book is not to make a presentation of all the existing models in the hardware industry and certainly not to compare them and the results they give; all of them are sold and any information about them can be obtained from the sellers. Unfortunately models builders are generally very eloquent to describe the beautiful sides of their models,not so much about how they were built, and especially why they were built the way they are,which is precisely what we are interested in here.

Consequently we will concentrate here on some concepts which were recently introduced: they might first interest the community of cost analysts, offer a track for education or for further research (models are far from being completely achieved) and,why not, the realization of other models.

The chapter starts by a presentation of what can be the description of a product for cost-estimating purposes. The reader must not forget that, if no comparison is possible with any other existing product, then the product has to be described in “absolute terms” (“relative terms” means that we compare the product with other products). Product description is therefore a very important subject when building a general model.

Two points are explored: the description of the product size on one hand, the description of the other aspects of the product on the other hand. The first point mentions the use of the (external) physical characteristics or the (external) functional characteristics. The second point studies the very important concept of the internal technical functions (ITF), from which the product structure, which synthesizes the product description beyond the size, is derived.

Then the quality level is deeply investigated from the requirements, built on the distance to the elastic limit the material(s) have to work.

After discussing the materials, the type of formula to be considered and the type of production are investigated.

Eventually the concept of “organizational structure” is developed as it is the key to be able to cost estimate without referring to a product family or even to a reference product.