Neural Network Models for the Estimation of Product Costs: An Application in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

The estimation of the production cost per unit of a product during its design phase can be extremely difficult, especially if information about previous similar products is missing. On the other hand, most of the costs that will be sustained during the production activity are implicitly determined mainly in the design phase, depending on the choice of characteristics and performance of the new product. Hence, the earlier the information about costs becomes available, the better the trade-off between costs and product performances can be managed. These considerations have led to the development of different design rules and techniques, such as Design to Cost, which