Economic Evaluation of Process Chains for Hybrid Products - Concept for Managing Cost Knowledge

Engineering activities focusing the design not only of products, but also of manufacturing processes bear a considerable potential for enhancing resource efficiency and, thereby, sustainability. Thus, within the Cluster of Excellence MERGE new technologies and processes, particularly for producing hybrid structures, are developed. To direct these inventions towards economic success, early economic evaluations are needed. This is a challenging task - above all cost knowledge is hardly available. Thus, based on a procedure model for a structured evaluation of process chains a cost knowledge management concept enabling a systematic and efficient generation and handling of cost relevant knowledge is presented.