Preventive evaluation of mould production cost in aluminium casting

Preventive evaluation of costs is strategic for the whole manufacturing industry and especially for companies whose manufacturing technology is based on expensive machinery, tools and fixtures, such as injection moulding of aluminium. Preventive evaluation of production costs and time is even more relevant for the mould producer, in order to quickly prepare commercial offers with an acceptable degree of accuracy. In this paper, the application of a parametric approach for the evaluation of the labour content in the production of mould for injection moulding of aluminium automotive components is presented. The approach is based on simple geometrical features of the part to be produced derived from their 3D model using the basic tools of CAD systems. The data acquired from a specialized mould production company was analysed by factor analysis in order to determine the structure of the labour content and then parametric modelling was applied. The results evidenced an acceptable degree of accuracy of the estimate combined with an exceptional ease of application.