Cost Rules - Discussion of New 2009 Rules

The database lets you attach files for the judges to review, like pdf files of drawings, jpg pictures of parts, etc. You can ignore the Excel field or use it as place to store the location of your file on disk for when you use the database.

Announcement: The plumbing portion of the materials table are now available for comment on fsaeonline.com. These are unofficial because I want to make sure that there aren't any errors or typographic mistakes. Please review your plumbing parts and if you end up with a $100 fitting please let me know right away. These will be built into the materials table when they are officially posted. I'd like to do that Sunday or Monday so please send your comments to Kathleen McDonald or post here.

Thanks

Examples

We have been so busy with AIR's that we haven't had a chance to update the examples from the tutorials or create new ones based on the evolution of the tables. I'm asking anyone who is willing to email Kathleen McDonald a part costing along with a drawing or picture that I can review and post to the website as an example after I reviewed it. The downside is your cost information will be public, the upside is you will have a Rules Committee member review your costing ahead of time. I won't necessarily review every one we receive but a few representative ones will be posted to the website with comments.

I haven't forgotten to cover the fixturing time for machining. I am working on a full proper response.

Thanks

Hello Mr Riley, I would like to know if the MS Access application for the BOM is now available for the teams and if it is reliable enough for beign used at its full potentiality.
Furthermore I would like to know if this application could be used also for the European events of the SAE.
Thank you for the attention.

Paolo Bernardotto

Hello Mr Riley,

I have a question concerning the tooling cost for a laminated composite. We make some carbon fiber panels with a balsa core that are flat. We lay up the materials on a piece of window glass to go in the autoclave. I assume that the $10,000 per m^2 for the composite tooling is meant for a contoured tool (such as a machined mold.) Is this also meant to apply to a simple flat surface such as our glass? $10,000 per m^2 seems awfully high for a piece of glass (we pay about $50 for a 30" x 60" piece.) If it does should we cost it as a composite tool?

Paolo: The software isn't available yet but when it is our intention is to make it available for more than just the North America events.

cjanota: In high volume manufacture you might use something more sophisticated, and if not think of it as the number of glass panels you would need to make 1000 units a year of that part. Sorry if this seems unfairly expensive to you but the whole point of standardized costs is to make them standard. In this one instance it might be high but on some others it might be low and if we do our job right it works out over all the parts on all the cars to be right on average and in most cases. Don't forget you divide the cost of the tool by 3000 (PVF=3000), so compared to the cost of the carbon and the labor the tooling contribution should be small.

Note: The PVF for monocoques is not 3000, and this captures the more complicated nature of these tools and the massive amount of time it takes to layup a tub. In future years we may develop the model that generates the PVF factors to account for simple geometries like this, but I think things are complicated enough this year.

Machining model:

Many of you are asking why we broke out rough and finish cuts and the different lathe and mill operations. I though it would be better for the teams and the judges to work with and read the reports. However, I have been convinced that what is easiest for everyone is to have one "machining" operation where you take the net finished volume and you take your starting shape and subtract them. What you are left with is the volume of material removed. This means now one line item in your process list can include all the machining operations. It is less detailed but easier for everyone.

So, I am adding a new process step called "Machining". It doesn't mention lathe or mill and has the same cost of $0.04 / cm^3.

There is nothing wrong with using the older process steps so I'm leaving in them in the tables but putting them in strike-through font so you won't think you have to use them. We'll try this out this year and if it doesn't work we can go back to the old way.

Note to everyone: this does not change the cost of any machined component only makes a new optional way to represent it. If you don't like it use the old way. And don't forget unless you use a basic forming process to create your part the minimum machining stock is 1.5mm.

Mr Riley
In previous versions of the materials table, the Honda ATV diff internals where included. I noticed that on the most recent ones, it is not. Nor is an option for the type of internals it uses. I understand that we have to make the case, but how do we need to price our internals?

Thanks in advance for your help

I want to change the Honda ATV differential over to the type of differential it is (like the other diffs). I have an email to a team about it but haven't heard back yet. Can you post the general type here so I can add it back more generally? I realized after I posted it that it was inconsistent to list the Honda ATV whereas everything else is "Torsen style" or "clutch plate style", etc.

Thanks

Mr. Riley,

I hope my summary of our electronics system sufficiently captured everything needed to develop a cost model. Let me know if you need anything else for it.

I just tried to download the new plumbing table, however the link currently points to tooling table.

Plumbing Table «9» (will be included as part of materials table)

Fortunately, tblPlumbing.xls is right where it should be in the directory structure. I imagine things remain pretty hectic over there, but when you get a chance, can you fix the main link?