A Study Of Rapid Cost Forecast For Configurable Automotive Products

Under the background of Mass Customization (MC), it is one of the most important means to improve the competition of the company by reducing the cost of automobile products as much as possible and quoting on the products rapidly and accurately. So, the study on calculating and forecasting the cost quickly and accurately is of great significance. In the paper, on the basis of literature research at home and abroad, the author does the major studies in the following areas:Firstly, the author details the current cost calculation problems of automobile products. Having analyzed the related literature, the main cost calculation methods are illustrated and the advantages and disadvantages of the methods are summarized. On the basis of these analyses, the author uses the Activity Based Costing (ABC) methods to calculate the cost of automobile products.Secondly, with a focus on the characteristics of the automobile production, the activity centers and activity drivers are determined according to the actual process. In the paper a calculation model S-ABC is set and the algorithm is presented. Compared with the generic model, the advantages and disadvantages of the model are given.The basic "type & allocation model" is adopted on the basis of the detailed analysis of the product structure and the production features. An automobile frame represent model is set up and the attributes of the configuration is determined. The author gives different similarity calculation model to different data item of the attributes. After that the solution of local similarity strategy is obtained, and through the establishment of fuzzy consistent matrix approach to determine the configuration of the weight. And ultimately, on the basis of the right of the configuration, the global similarity is calculated.A variety of possible search results are discussed in the paper and different forecasting ways are given.Finally, on the basis of above researches, a cost database is set up using the ABC methods. An example is given to validate the feasibility of the model in the paper and the forecast result is compared with the actual calculation result. At last, to further improve the model the author proposes some advices.