Time-oriented pricing for the tool and mould manufacturing industry

Providing their customers with the most accurate pricing has become one of the key competitive factors ensuring commercial success for tool and mould manufacturers. However, pricing is characterised by an inconsistent and subjective supply calculation, particularly in the customised production area. In addition, even though time dynamic costs influence the pricing calculations significantly, they are rarely taken into consideration adequately. This can lead to an increasing deviation between the pre- and post-calculation and, thus, to losses of the enterprise benefits. This paper presents an approach, which allows tool and mould manufacturers to calculate their pricing in relation to time dynamic costs. Starting from the identification of suitable time dynamic cost parameters, an appropriate prediction tool to forecast these costs is developed. Based on an enterprise-related aggregation of knowledge, this approach permits propositions concerning the probability of occurrence of the estimated price. Furthermore, the realisation of the method in a user-friendly software surface and its validation will be presented.