Cost Estimation And Decision Support Oriented To Product Life-cycle

The product cost is one of composite criteria which reflect the level of production, operation and management in an enterprise. The establishment of an integrated methods system for cost estimation makes a great practical sense for all kinds of decisions while operating an enterprise effectively. The systematic research on cost estimation, value analysis, cost control and etc., which is combined with product design for whole product life-cycle, should be done actively, for the design stage is the best occasion to control cost.The current product cost research approximately includes two kinds according to the domestic and overseas research contents, namely cost estimation and analysis, cost reduction and control. While those research including many points of view, they all base on a common idea, that's taking life-cycle cost into account at design stage and analyzing adoptable principles for decreasing cost during all stages on this basis. However, there are still some improvable things, and domestic research still lags far behind in comparison with foreign countries.Based on the absorption of the latest achievements in domestic, aiming at current cost management theory and methodological shortcomings and those problems faced by practical application, a comprehensive analysis of cost management features of modeling is taken, and a research on the combination of activity-based costs and the product life-cycle cost theory is made in regard to theories, methods and support systems. Main contents of this thesis are followings: a) A full presentation of the meaning, structure and estimation method of the product life-cycle costs; b) The establishment of an integrated product life-cycle cost estimation model, a comprehensive analysis of integration and inheritance relationship among the cost estimates, value analysis and lowering costs; c) Building mapping relationship between design features and life-cycle costs, using DFC and value engineering to support product design to reduce life-cycle cost; d) Establishment of an integrated cost management system using integrated management thoughts, a framework of cost estimation and decision support systems is proposed, exposition of principles and methods of construction for corresponding knowledge base and database.