Control and Reduce Product Costs with SEER Tools

Large projects in the bidding and design phase pose significant challenges in terms of delivering affordability, forecasting risk, establishing delivery timescales and establishing total costs. These challenges are also opportunities, providing you can obtain accurate estimating data on a timely basis and assess project decisions and pathways within a holistic environment.

For instance, the U.S. Department of Defense currently ranks affordability as the key factor in entering a bid on one of their projects. Certainly there are other factors which impinge on the decision, such as operational effectiveness, however in budget conscious times; affordability is the crucial ranking element.

How can you assess affordability at such an early stage of a large project, for instance the delivery of an aircraft carrier with attendant aircraft, helicopters, weapon systems, electronic infrastructure and personnel? How are you able to assess the “Design to Cost” alternatives of incorporating a different system which performs the same function into a large scale project? How can you manage and reduce product costs of acquisition, but engage in reducing total costs of ownership?

How Can Galorath Help?

SEER Covers Software, Hardware, IT and Manufacturing Total Costs of Ownership

Galorath’s SEER product suite provides realistic and highly accurate total cost of ownership estimates for a range of large scale projects, including software, hardware, IT and manufacturing projects. The SEER product suite utilizes a simulation modeling, knowledge bases and a cost database. The cost database used by SEER is culled from a large number of existing and past projects incorporating real-world information on the costs of an enormous variety of components, including future technology and modern materials data. The SEER product cost estimating suite provides the ability, with a high degree of accuracy, to assess “Should Costs” for large scale projects.

The ability to assess “Should Costs” is important when considering decisions such as “Make Buy”, as well as in dealing with suppliers in both competitive and non-competitive stances. SEER product cost estimating software provides you with the ability to assess, at a very early decision stage, the different design alternatives within the context of any large scale project, and also how that individual project fits into an even broader context. Taking our example of an aircraft carrier, if the DOD requirement is to carry 60 aircraft but a cost related design decision results in only 50 being carried, this is an issue you need to discover in the bidding stage of a project to avoid project failure.

The SEER product cost estimation software range removes a large measure of the subjectivity which is involved in determining production costing. In turn, this provides you with the ability to engage not only in product cost reduction, but also in reducing overall project and commercial risk.

Production Cost Drivers

In addition, Galorath’s SEER applications  provides the ability to engage in product cost reduction in terms of what the market drivers are for determining costs. For instance, how is the global market affecting costs, for instance should you consider production in India or Indiana? For each decision alternative, SEER will provide product cost controlling data assessment which will also provide insight into quality, deliverability and operational effectiveness of the project through its production lifecycle.

Controlling Production Costs with Suppliers

Galorath’s SEER is a highly effective tool when dealing with suppliers who are the sole suppliers of a project component. As an effective monopoly holder, such suppliers exercise an enormous advantage in contract negotiations; however SEER provides negotiators with hard information and assessment on “Should Cost” to allow for realistic and informed negotiation which in turn leads directly to reducing production cost and price. Additionally SEER can be used to evaluate the “Will Cost” opportunities to reduce cost.

SEER also provides risk reduction in product cost estimation when dealing with suppliers in a competitive stance. Many product cost estimation software solutions rely on product cost data by simply asking suppliers for pricing information. This is problematical, because in the first instance, a supplier may decide to bid as a loss leader creating an unsustainably low price, and secondly, such techniques typically obtain the lowest price from those offered, again increasing the risk of underestimating true production cost.

Why choose Galorath for Generating Production Cost Savings?

Galorath has an enviable track record of delivering highly accurate product cost savings to thousands of clients, including the U.S. Government and major contractors.

Galorath utilizes state-of-the-art parametric cost estimation techniques, which have been developed into a simple-to-use package of extremely powerful and feature-rich tools. This means clients are able to focus upon generating production cost savings and ensuring operational and commercial benefits are maximized.

Galorath’s SEER product range benefits from the proprietal cost and project information database of tens of thousands of real-life projects around the world. This means clients are able to access, highly accurate unit product cost information to allow them to aggressively reduce production costs.

Galorath’s has a team of experts devoted to ensuring that the product cost information provided by the SEER product range is highly accurate and reliable. This especially includes cost estimation information for emergent technologies and materials, for which historical data may not be readily obtainable from other sources.

Ultimately, Galorath is a true partner for any large scale project contractor, which generates superior ROI.