Value Engineering | Significant cost savings with 4cost

Significant cost savings with 4cost

The relevance of value engineering, cost engineering, design-to-cost and calculation during development for industrial companies is of utmost important today. If you want to keep up with the growing global competition, you have to produce products with high customer value using the least possible resources. This requires a systematic optimisation of all processes in the entire product development process as well as in the subsequent use.

With the help of standardised value analyses, cost-down and should costing, 4cost’s value engineering uncovers maximum savings potentials in product costs at an early stage. Our innovative software solutions are designed and used for this – for consistent cost calculations right from the start of the project.

You can rely on our decades of experience from over 2,500 projects with renowned industrial companies worldwide.

Product costing with 4cost

Our cost experts look forward to actively assisting you. Together we will get the maximum out of your projects.

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Our international customers report on their success with 4cost

“The comparison of providers revealed, that 4cost achieved the highest score. We were particularly convinced by the fact that 4cost’s solutions can be used for all commodities, regardless of technology. Equally decisive was the enormous speed with which cost estimates are possible despite limited information.”

Christian Ahrens

Team leader of the Value Engineering department, Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH

“A major advantage of the 4cost software is the seamless interlocking of the two costing approaches, top-down and bottom-up. This appeals to a wide variety of cost estimators and ensures a consistent cost view without losing information across all project phases.”

Alexander Nordmeyer

Value Engineer, Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH

“The departments experience made with the costing software from 4cost are very positive and associated with high savings. By increasing transparency in the cost structures, a monetary benefit in the seven-digit range can already be recorded. We have made the right decision in our selection process and are very happy about our success!”

Manfred Billes

Department head of the EEPC team, MAN

“From small start-ups to large corporations, costs must be constantly kept in view and controlled, especially in these difficult times. This succeeds very well with the 4cost software and I believe we can generate real added value for our companies.”

Sarah Wörz

Officer, Digitalisierungszentrum Ostwürttemberg

“The consistent calculation method of the 4cost tools convinced us right from the start. Very quickly we realised, that this methodology supports our needs in calculation, value engineering, purchasing and engineering excellently.”

Frank Hoffmann

Head of Supply Chain Management, Rheinmetall Electronics GmbH

“With 4cost's modern parametric calculation models it is possible to estimate good and valid costs already in phases with limited detail of knowledge. In order to establish this, we not only made use of 4cost's software solutions, but also using their expertise in value engineering.”

Senior staff member

Purchasing department, Rolls-Royce

“The 4cost-aces interface is user-friendly and logically structured, especially when compared to other cost estimation tools. This makes it easier to use the tool even for occasional users.”

Thomas Fiedler

Head of Cost Architecture A30X, Future Projects & Costing Performance, Airbus Deutschland

“We decided on 4cost because we see a significant added value for our calculation and value analysis in a consistent approach from quick cost estimates to detailed calculations. We focus now on the main cost drivers and identify areas with the greatest potential for cost optimization.”

Werner Seifried

Technical Director, Liebherr-Hydraulikbagger GmbH (2009)

“With 4cost we have a partner with whom we are implementing our objective of a long-term partnership in the areas of cost estimation, value analysis and cost structure analysis. We will continue to establish 4cost's solutions and use them even more intensively in the future, because the added value is obvious.”

Werner Seifried

Technical Director, Liebherr-Hydraulikbagger GmbH (2009)

“With the parametric cost estimate from 4cost-aces, we are fast and reliably in estimating new assemblies and examine scenarios.”

“With the 4cost-structure calculation tool, we are tracking target costs and manage our projects, including history and versioning.”

Peter Schmidt

Value analysis department, Liebherr-Hydraulikbagger GmbH (2009)

“The partnership-based cooperation with 4cost enables us to arrive at rapid cost estimates for our projects both in-house and directly at our customers site. I would not have expected a calculation of the costs at such an early stage in the product development process with such depth, consideration of variants and meaningfulness of the answers!”

Matthias Miesbeck

Project engineer, HOLZER Firmengruppe

“We were enthusiastic about the speed and cost transparency during the 4cost workshops. We used the results from the workshops as a base for our business case analysis. We froze the cost target as cost reference for the subsequent development process and continuously referenced and checked on them.”

Hinrik Weber

Head of the optoelectronics business unit, Pepperl+Fuchs

“The speed in which the costs are determined is impressive with this method. Elaborate work plans do not have to be predefined and evaluated, because the parametric approach of 4cost-aces is based on material and value-added approaches.”

Ernst Tabel

Project manager, Pepperl+Fuchs

“With 4cost-aces we are able to arrive at valid cost statements very quickly. Compared to a bottom-up calculation that typically takes several weeks, we only need one to three days for the first cost assessment.”

Gregor Schwab

Head of Orders & Offers, Production, EADS Defence & Security

“In addition to the drastic time advantage of this costing method, the workshops have another effect that should not be underestimated: all participants agree on a common costing basis during the meetings and evaluate it in detail. The acceptance of the calculated cost values is very high due to the involvement of all participants.”

Gregor Schwab

Head of Orders & Offers, Production, EADS Defence & Security

“The workshop with the 4cost team was convincing both in terms of methodology and result. We were getting an idea of how the parametric approach of the 4cost-aces costing software works. Many new possibilities could now be approached in our daily work.”

Stefan Buchwald

Strategic buyer, BARD Engineering

“The 4cost solutions enable us to become an extended workbench to the costing departments of companies in our region.”

Peter Schmidt

Head, Digitalisierungszentrum Ostwürttemberg

“The early breakdown of product and project costs with 4cost-aces not only offers us a high level of cost transparency, but in particular shows us optimisation potential for development and design. On the one hand, we are thus able to forecast future manufacturing costs in the case of design changes and on the other hand, to independently check manufacturing costs of already existing designs.”

Martin Klotz

Product Cost Engineer, Liebherr-Werk Biberach GmbH

“The simplicity and speed of creating and comparing different technical, location and quantity scenarios in 4cost-aces is impressive.”

Andreas Müller

Senior Operations and Procurement Manager, AutoFlight Europe

“Thanks to the workshop with 4cost, we received meaningful and transparent results in a short time, which allows us to take measures at an early stage to secure the profitability of our products.”

Andreas Müller

Senior Operations and Procurement Manager, AutoFlight Europe

“The use of 4cost-aces has led to a considerable improvement in our efficiency, as we calculate up to 75 % faster. Cost calculations that would otherwise take us several weeks to complete are done within a few days with 4cost-aces.”

Hanno Pieles

Director Business Unit Performance, newboxes

“4cost-aces has become a valuable tool for our company because we use it to help our clients increase their cost transparency significantly and take their cost management to the next level.”

Hanno Pieles

Director Business Unit Performance, newboxes

"Parametric costing enables us to create valid calculations in the early quotation phases with relatively little effort."

Tim Wiedemann

Systems Engineer, MT Aerospace AG

Read our client testimonials

The advantages of our value engineering at a glance

Fast and valid cost estimates

Cost-optimised from the start of the project. The use of our costing software solutions for end-to-end cost calculations enables us to provide you with valid cost estimates. A high degree of accuracy is ensured based on just a few pieces of information in early phases. Our cost reduction experts work with you to develop and evaluate different concepts and scenarios to find the best possible solutions throughout the entire product development process.

Agile team of experts

4cost provides you with experienced value analysts and technology specialists from the areas of development, design, production, project management, software programming, assembly, testing and integration as required. Collaboration with our cross-functional team of experts enables a neutral view of your projects, so that previously undiscovered potential is made visible and opportunities to increase innovation are opened up.

In addition to short-term support during peak loads of projects, our value engineers are also happy to provide your company with long-term, cross-project support in the development of cost-optimised products and the implementation of a company-wide standardised value analysis method.

Professional reports and recommendations

For a reliable business case and maximum decision-making certainty. On the basis of the analyses carried out by 4cost, you receive reports prepared according to your needs, in which we display all relevant results for a quick overview and comparisons. Based on this, our experts make concrete recommendations for action and weigh up the pro and cons of the opportunities and risks for you.

Support for purchasing

Make full use of your savings potential in purchasing. Thanks to our innovative, rapid cost analysis of purchased parts (should costing), you can optimise your purchasing strategies, make well-founded make-or-buy decisions and create a secure basis for negotiations with suppliers. The experts at 4cost will provide and help you with the necessary arguments to lower your purchase prices. We are also be very happy to support you personally in negotiations.

We support you in all phases of product development

Concept phase

The longest lever for optimising product costs is here.

Evaluate different concepts of design with us and its influence and requirements on specifications to achieve the cost optimum.

Development phase

Optimisations can be achieved by exchanging parts, using common parts, using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or working out material alternatives. Design-for-Manufacturing (DFM) and Design-for-Assembly (DFA) as well as continuous cost analyses with our value engineers are standard.

Ready for series production

As soon as approved specifications, designs and first quotations are available, our measures to support purchasing take effect. There are numerous approaches to optimising the procurement situation. Particularly noteworthy here are technology-neutral benchmarks and the derivation of suppliers’ cost structures and surcharge rates.

Best possible product design with lowest possible costs