TECHNOLOGY COST MODELING FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF PRINTED-CIRCUIT BOARDS IN NEW ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

The rapid pace of technological and material advances has made it diff icult to ascertain the most cost effective plan for manufacturing new products. The decision to identify the appropriate manufacturing metho ds and materials selection is most timely made during the initial desi gn stage of the product. However, tradeoffs in manufacturing and mater ials technology are not easily discernible to the design team while tr aditional cost accounting systems do not reflect the continuous improv ements nor the opportunities in increasing quality and reducing cost S ystems that have recently been developed to assist in estimating new p roduct cost, such as Activity Based Casting (ABC) and Technical Cost M odeling, focus on a stable manufacturing environment They presume that production is either dedicated to the new product, or that utilizatio n and/or yields of machines are at static levels. In most modern compa nies, the majority of new products introduced are evolutionary in natu re, attempting to gain maximum advantage of current material and manuf acturing technologies while continuing to be made alongside existing p roduction. These new products can significantly change the current man ufactured product and material mix, and hence their cost. A technology based modeling approach is presented in this paper to address the iss ues of changes in a dynamic manufacturing environment, where each desi gn selection can be evaluated individually based on its production imp act. Elements of this approach are described in the design of electron ic products using printed circuit boards. The design team can select f rom a large combinations of technologies, materials and manufacturing steps, each with its particular cast, production rate and yield. A tec hnology based cost modeling system can be developed to guide the team in the selection process by identifying the cost tradeoffs involved in each alternative design.