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Cost Engineering
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Int. J. Production Economics 109 (2007) 1 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe
Editorial
Cost Engineering Cost Engineering is becoming a popular subject for academic study. More and more engineering industries are expressing interest to improve rigour of their cost engineering practices. This special issue presents eight selected papers from the 12th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications (CE2005). Six of these papers directly link with cost engineering and represents state of the art in the area, the other two papers discusses two related topics that contribute to better cost engineering understanding and process. Bernard et al. presents a concurrent cost engineering approach for sand casting process. The approach supports negotiation to customer delivery within the foundry environment. The next paper by Elgh and Cederfeldt demonstrates a use of concurrent cost engineering thinking to support producibility studies. The research has developed a methodology to link cost information with engineering design. On a similar topic, Curran et al. has presented a methodology that facilitates the integration of design, manufacturing and cost within a digital manufacturing environment. A case study is presented on a commercial regional jet. Koonce et al. addresses possible sources of error in manufacturing cost estimating. They have developed a risk analysis-based methodology to identify the errors in input data for a cost estimate. The paper then presents a methodology for applying
error identification techniques in a hierarchical costestimating tool. Another paper by Wang presents manufacturing cost modelling using neural networks. Rios et al. presents an approach to estimate additional cost incurred in case of a design requirement change. The paper presents a case study based on the aerospace industry. The research is partially inspired by axiomatic design principles and uses a matrix-based approach for the cost prediction. Axiomatic design is also applied by Coelho and Mourao to select the most appropriate manufacturing process in order to allow for the subsequent detail design of a mechanical component. And finally, Chiang and Trappey have presented a framework analysing activities in a collaborative value chain. The research has identified the functions of product lifecycle management required to collaborate and integrate members of value chains across different organizations. This study contributes to current understanding on efforts required for the collaboration. The papers in this special issue have raised some questions for the research and have contributed to formalise the cost engineering practice in industry.
0925-5273/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2007.03.003
Rajkumar Roy Decision Engineering Centre, Building 50, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedford, UK E-mail address: r.roy@cranfield.ac.uk
Int. J. Production Economics 109 (2007) 1 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe
Editorial
Cost Engineering Cost Engineering is becoming a popular subject for academic study. More and more engineering industries are expressing interest to improve rigour of their cost engineering practices. This special issue presents eight selected papers from the 12th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications (CE2005). Six of these papers directly link with cost engineering and represents state of the art in the area, the other two papers discusses two related topics that contribute to better cost engineering understanding and process. Bernard et al. presents a concurrent cost engineering approach for sand casting process. The approach supports negotiation to customer delivery within the foundry environment. The next paper by Elgh and Cederfeldt demonstrates a use of concurrent cost engineering thinking to support producibility studies. The research has developed a methodology to link cost information with engineering design. On a similar topic, Curran et al. has presented a methodology that facilitates the integration of design, manufacturing and cost within a digital manufacturing environment. A case study is presented on a commercial regional jet. Koonce et al. addresses possible sources of error in manufacturing cost estimating. They have developed a risk analysis-based methodology to identify the errors in input data for a cost estimate. The paper then presents a methodology for applying
error identification techniques in a hierarchical costestimating tool. Another paper by Wang presents manufacturing cost modelling using neural networks. Rios et al. presents an approach to estimate additional cost incurred in case of a design requirement change. The paper presents a case study based on the aerospace industry. The research is partially inspired by axiomatic design principles and uses a matrix-based approach for the cost prediction. Axiomatic design is also applied by Coelho and Mourao to select the most appropriate manufacturing process in order to allow for the subsequent detail design of a mechanical component. And finally, Chiang and Trappey have presented a framework analysing activities in a collaborative value chain. The research has identified the functions of product lifecycle management required to collaborate and integrate members of value chains across different organizations. This study contributes to current understanding on efforts required for the collaboration. The papers in this special issue have raised some questions for the research and have contributed to formalise the cost engineering practice in industry.
0925-5273/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2007.03.003
Rajkumar Roy Decision Engineering Centre, Building 50, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedford, UK E-mail address: r.roy@cranfield.ac.uk