Study On The Application Of Designing For Cost (DFC) In Mechanical And Electrical Product’s Development

The cost of design and development of mechanical and electrical products onlyaccounts for several percents in the total cost of the product, but70%-80%cost of producthave been determined at the stage of the product development. Then conceptual designphase decides most functional and performance parameters of the product. Thensubsequent manufacture, operational, maintenance and write-off cost have almost beendecided. Therefore, controlling the cost at the stage of concept design is the most efficientway.This paper is for designing issues from the life cycle cost （LCC-Life Cycle Cost）perspective, mainly making research on the following aspects:First, domestic and foreign research in the relevant field of the paper is discussed andanalyzed, which makes it clear that controlling the cost at the stage of design is mostefficient. Then the best way and technology to solve the problem is design for cost（DFC-Design For Cost，DFC）.Second, combining with characteristics of mechanical and electrical productsconceptual design and the ideas of design for cost, the implementation and application wayof DFC technology is raised. The theory of the full lifecycle cost is discussed, and the keycomponent of full lifecycle of mechanical and electrical products is mainly analyzed.Based on the research of feature mapping technology, the design features directly map tothe cost features when mechanical and electrical products enforce DFC, which lays thegroundwork for estimating total costs of life cycle later.Third, several ways of estimating are summarized, and all the models’ advantages anddisadvantages are analyzed. Then the relevant theory of artificial neural networks isexpounded in detail, and the RBF and BP neural networks are focused to study. How tobuild the model of the life cycle cost of the mechanical and electrical products by using theRBF and BP neural networks is discussed into depth.Final, the DFC technology is applied at the stage of designing in the horizontalmachining centers. First three kind of initiatory designing solution are raised, and then theneural network of RBF and BP are used in the lifecycle cost estimating modeling.Next themodels are trained and tested by the same sample of history data. The RBF net is moreadvantageous than BP net in the cost estimation by comparing the training process and textresults. Finally, the life cycle cost of three kinds of initiatory designing solution is estimated by RBF neural network.The results of the study have an instructive significance for applying of the design forcost on mechanical and electrical products, and would be reference for manufacturers’control cost effectively.