A Method for Forecasting the Running Costs of Manufacturing Technologies in Automotive Production during the Early Planning Phase

Abstract The running costs of production sites are a decisive factor in the overheads of automotive production. Because of this, it is important for many operators to decrease those costs in a sustainable way. Therefore, they try to reduce both the energy consumption costs of production systems, as well as their maintenance costs. However, most parts of the running costs are already determined during the very early phases of the product creation process. The approach in this paper shows how the decision for a specific manufacturing technology influences the factory costs. It is necessary to determine the life-cycle costs with regard to the manufacturing technology. Therefore, deep knowledge about the process itself and the support processes is required. This paper shows how cost relevant parameters can be identified and introduces a method to determine the prospective costs for maintenance and energy consumption in advance.