Life Cycle Cost Estimation of Robot Systems in an Early Production Planning Phase

Cost estimation is necessary for comparing manufacturing systems. Because of simultaneous engineering this approximation should take place in an early planning stage with uncertain information. However traditional calculation methods do not concern the possibility to use robot systems in different scenarios along their life cycle.Due to a high diversity of these systems, the costs can vary in a large range within an application. This paper introduces a cost estimation method for robot systems in an early planning phase also regarding future scenarios. Therefore the presented methods for product cost estimation are linked with a developed DMM (Domain Mapping Matrix).