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Digital cost-engineering by Perfect Cost Grid®

The benchmarking and cost-engineering capabilities in automotive improved transparency of product costs significantly and can be leveraged into other industries. However, other sectors are far behind - if these techniques were deployed a siginifcant competitive advantage can be gained. Only a few manufacturers have been able to commit the capacity and investment required. In addition, few cost-engineering functions can deliver savings on products already under development while increasing benchmarking activities and achieving 100% cost transparency.

PA Consulting Group's 'Perfect Cost Grid' (PA Perfect Cost Grid®) – the first web-based benchmarking and digital cost-engineering platform – gives your purchasing, cost engineering and development teams timely online access to the comparative data and costing tools they need to develop competitively priced products, achieve significant savings in material and software costs and minimise investment.

Videos

An introduction to PA's Perfect Cost Grid
An introduction to PA's Perfect Cost Grid
Using the benchmark factory for teardowns
Using the benchmark factory for teardowns

Experience

PA Perfect Cost Grid is based on almost ten years of project experience across key sectors:

    • Joint project between a German and a French car maker to reduce costs though costs per vehicle were far exceeding target costs – identified savings potential of up to 690€ per car.
    • Cost and weight optimisation for an EV platform of a global car maker in Germany when 36 months before start of production the cost were exceeding targets by up to 40% – identified savings potential of more than 2,000€ per car.
    • Cost optimisation and target costing for a new transporter – existing cost down process with focus on product cost and investment specifically in the powertrain improved, resulting in vehicle coming back on target cost.
    • Cost optimisation in a low-volume market of automatic transmissions for city buses – identified 40% cost savings for a supplier´s new transmission platform of which 20% were implemented immediately.
    • Implementing cost engineering and achieving major savings for a global telco provider – ‘fit for design to cost’ resulted in new processes, governance and training of the team as well as realised cost savings of more than 500k€.
    • Cost optimisation for three adiabatic cooling systems of a global telco provider – potential of 30% in average for each vendor based on clear idea descriptions and defined target costs.
    • Improving procurement process, knowledge of processes and resources allocation for a leading train operator – achieved 20% savings in resources employed.
    • Within 12 months we helped a signalling and control manufacturer to reduce contract costs by over 30% in a heavily regulated environment.
    • Conducting a teardown and benchmark project for five focus systems of a fork lift truck – 66 technical ideas identified with an estimated value of €286 to €453 for a fork lift truck led to supplier negotiations to reduce cost of components.
    • Benchmarking and cost reduction of towers for a manufacturer of wind turbines – commercial saving potential identified based on >40 technical cost reduction ideas, reflecting different variants of towers and competitor solutions.
    • Product cost optimisation of on- and offshore wind turbines – savings identified were double digit in percentage, based on technical input and success of the project the client established their own value engineering department.
    • Significant cost reduction for a drinks manufacturer aiming to deliver each unit to market with a 40% reduction in cost within a two year period – identified >60% potential savings for their next generation vending machine.
    • Cost reduction for a skin care device manufacturer re-evaluating their product costs – unique combination of product knowledge, cost-engineering, strategic sourcing and commercial negotiation identified numerous cost saving opportunities.
    • Cost reduction for a medical device company – achieved savings in excess of 50% from the original design within a 14 months project timeframe and enhanced product stability.
    • Cost reduction of a grooming device for a shaver manufacturers – increased the on-time delivery from 35% to 75% in just four months and improved the production process.

Client stories

Contact

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