Study On Product Cost Analysis And Pricing System Under Agile Manufacturing Environment

Quick quotation is the key to rapid response to customer requirements and cost is one of the most important factors for quotation. Consequently, the enterprises press for the cost estimation methods meeting themselves and the quick and accurate pricing system. It is an important research subject on agile manufacturing field and significant for enterprises to strengthen the agility and competition ability.An analysis on the process of product quotation and modeling method of system was achieved by author. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is applied to system functions analysis and the system function model development. The function module of product pricing system includes six functions modules. They are system setting, inquiry processing, cost estimation, reference quotation, quotation examine and approve, quotation management. The cost estimation module is the kernel of pricing system and the study emphases of the thesis.A thorough analysis on cost composition and cost acting factors is achieved and the cost estimation module is built by the method of the back-propagation network(BPN) incorporating genetic algorithms(GA). The GA is applied to optimize the initial weight of BPN in order to find the valid search range in the solution space and the BP algorithms is applied to precise search in the small range. The quantified and normalized acting factors of cost are input parameters and the cost is output result in the module. The simulation example proved that the algorithm is fast and effective in estimating cost.The cost is estimated through the different methods as different characteristic of design phase. The ANNs is used for product cost estimation in the concept design phase. The method of work cost based on product BOM is used for manufacturing cost estimation in the detailed design phase. The method of work cost and BP ANNs are combined to estimating manufacturing cost and design cost, and ANNs is used for sale cost estimation in the structure design phase, furthermore, the life cycle cost (LCC) is achieved.The prototype of pricing system under agile manufacture environment isdeveloped by the language of JSP and SQL Server 2000 database techniques. The running result shows that the structure of the system is feasible.