Development of cost models for electronics assemblies

This report documents the work done to provide and effective tool to estimate the cost of electronics products. Successful electronics commercial products are those that satisfy a need and can be offered at an affordable cost. The cost implications of a product design can be used as a decision-making tool to guide its development. Therefore, there is a need for cost models for this type of product that can be used from early stages of product conception to guide its research and development efforts. A cost model has been formulated assuming a generic fabrication/assembly sequence and studying how resources are consumed and costs incurred throughout these electronic assembly and fabrication processes. A prototype application of this cost model has been coded using spreadsheets to calculate the cost per board of each cost element for both assembly processes and PCB fabrication processes.