5 Questions for Better Cost Management Discussions (Industry Week Series Part 1)

 Education, PCM Technique / Cost Models, Product Cost in Industry, Project Cost Management, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 022020
 

Hello Cost Management aficionados!

We have an exciting new series that our managing partner, Eric Hiller, is writing for Industry Week, who has eagerly accepted all the content.   The series is all about how an executive (and other people who are not cost experts) can understand what the cost management team is communicating.  The first in the series was just published yesterday.   Here is a short snippet as a teaser:

 

A big part of the communication problem is that there is not just one type of cost model. Cost management is a broad field with a variety of methodologies to address the almost infinite world of situations for which one wants to know the cost of manufacture or service delivery. Even if an executive has some understanding of one particular cost-modeling technique, it can often be confusing when the analytics team uses different technique.

This can lead to uncomfortable meeting, where executives and colleagues outside of the cost management team are confused how to understand the results and/or have low confidence in the results. Conversely, the cost management team may feel frustrated that executives are not listening to them or do not trust their conclusions.

What is the solution? The short answer is that the product cost management team needs to better educate their audiences, not only on their results, but how they got to those results. In addition, it is incumbent upon their colleagues to be willing to learn, and invest the time to become conversant in the terminology of cost management just like they would in other function areas, e.g. product development, purchasing, finance, etc.

Please click this link to read the article:  5 Questions for Better Cost Management Discussions

We look forward to your engagement, comments , and sharing.

Thanks!

Hiller Associates

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aPriori — PCM / Spend Analytics Solution Profile

 PCM Technique / Cost Models, Project Cost Management, Software Tools (for PCM, ERP, PLM, etc.), Spend Analytics  No Responses »
Jun 092020
 

Hello again cost management aficionados!

Spend Matters just published Eric Hillers’s next deep dive on cost management tools — this time on the article reviewing aPriori.  They decided to break it into 2 articles.  The first one went up on June 8
It is behind their paywall, so you will only see a teaser of a few paragraphs, unless you have a subscription.
You all may remember that I did a two-part series on the history and landscape of PCM and Spend Analytics solutions with our good friends over at SpendMatters.com in December. You can find those jumping off point analysis here and here.

Please check it out over at Spend Matters. One caveat: I have been the victim of my own success in that Spend Matters thinks the article such good content that you will see a teaser article and then need to pass through their paywall to see the full analysis.

Here’s a teaser of some of the insight that you’ll get:

 

 

 

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Eric Hiller of Hiller Associates to give 1-hour Design-to-Value seminar Tuesday 3/24!

 Design-to-Value, Product Cost in Industry, Project Cost Management  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 
Want to learn about how Design-to-Value (DtV) can deliver millions in savings and growth to your company?   
Running out of Netflix B-rated shows, as you self-quarantine from Corona?    
Well, you’re in luck!    
Eric Hiller, Managing Partner, of Hiller Associates and one of the top practitioners of DtV in the world is giving a 1-hour seminar and Q&A through GLG Research on Design-to_Value.  (we’ll also talk a bit about should-cost, as well).  
Please go here to sign-up and pass this link and info onto all of your friends that care about Product Cost Management, as well!
CLICK HERE to register for the free webinar and Q&A
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That can’t be right!? (Linearity and Discontinuity in Pricing and Costing)

 Product Pricing, Project Cost Management, Uncategorized  19 Responses »
May 142014
 

Have you ever walked into a dining room with several pictures and seen that one picture that is not hanging parallel to the floor? If you’re a recovering engineer like me, you feel an overwhelming urge to correct the problem. You just can’t be comfortable until the frame is in alignment… unless you find your molding or floor/ceiling are not parallel.   Then you have bigger problems!

Why does a slight misalignment (maybe just a couple degrees off bubble) set off instant and loud alarm bells in your brain? It’s because the human brain is very sensitive to two things:

  1. Linearity/symmetry
  2. Discontinuity (especially non-monotonic functions)

I was having a lively discussion the other day with a director of pricing at a Fortune 500 distributor.  We were talking about how this affects product pricing. For example, when you have a catalogue with millions of products, it can be very challenging to keep pricing consistent. Consider the figure to the right. The orange dots could be product offerings for electric motors, graphed by the price vs. a performance attribute, such as horsepower. We expect price to increase with performance. But what happens when you find the blue or green dots?   The brain says “that’s not right!”Hiller_Associates_Costing_Linearity

Now, there may be legitimate reasons for the negative or positive arbitrage.   Maybe there is a sale? Maybe there is an economy of scale on selling that particular model?  However, that brings us to the next challenge, pricing functions that are not monotonically increasing (i.e. they have a negative slope for at least one product model). This is a problem, because this is difficult for even economies of scale to overcome. And, the customer does not like it, because it makes the vendor look as if their pricing is capricious, which causes distrust.

Discontinuity in Product Costing

This happens in costing too. For example, although “sunk cost” is an important concept in capital investment, it can wreak havoc on product costing. If a certain machine is fully depreciated and now has a greatly reduced overhead rate assigned by the accounting department, this will likely confuse the purchasing or engineering folks using a Product Cost Management software. It will either cause them to distrust the costing software or your manual analysis or it will drive them to cost all the parts they can using that

This is yet another curse of the difference between the data relevance needs in order to perform good cost or pricing analysis versus the data reliability needs, over which accountants typically obsess. From an accounting point of view the depreciated resource is “free” (or highly discounted). However, from a costing viewpoint, the abilities of that machine will have to be replaced sooner or later. Worse, the distortion in the overhead rate will lead to underestimations of cost, and often, unpleasant surprises late in product development and sourcing.

What to do about non-linearity, discontinuity, and non-monotonic pricing/costing functions:

Hiller_Associates_Fix_it_or_feature_itYou have a couple of choices on how to resolve the geometric costing/pricing problems in the minds of your customers or colleagues:

  1. Remove them – the first solution is to correct the false arbitrage by fixing the pricing or costing data. For example, in the case of the machine that is fully depreciated, change the overhead rate back to reflect the cost at which a new machine with the same capability would depreciate.
  2. Highlight them – if the pricing or costing curve has an unexpected kink in it for a legitimate reason, then you should make everyone aware of this and use it to your advantage. For example, in the catalogue motor example, advertise the sale and let people know this is not natural or permanent!

A lot of mistakes in pricing or costing are difficult to notice without close inspection, but remember anything that violates the brains desire for smooth regularity will stick out like a sore thumb… or a good deal.

 

 

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If Your Company Does Product Cost Reductions, It’s Already Too Late

 Product Cost in Industry, Project Cost Management  3 Responses »
May 202013
 

In the last few weeks, there has been a hearty discussion on this blog about controlling costs before versus after a product launches.  This got us thinking about this situation, we thought that it could be plumbed to greater depth.

Therefore, Hiller Associates is proud to announce its latest article in IndustryWeek, entitled:

If Your Company Does Product Cost Reductions, It’s Already Too Late

If you would like to read the article, click the link above to go to IndustryWeek.com.  Later in the week, we will post the article, in it’s entirety, on this blog.

 

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The Rangers of the Wilds – Where does product cost management live in the organization?

 Project Cost Management  5 Responses »
Apr 292013
 

If you are a Product Cost Management person with an inner nerd like us, then you probably love and the Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien. One of the iconic characters in the book is the king in exile, wondering the wilds as a Robin Hoodesque type of character, a man named Aragorn.  One of the things that makes this character so compelling is the fact that he, and his brothers-in-arms, the Dunedain Rangers, secretly wander the wilds protecting those who are blissfully unaware of the evil all around them.  

Why do we love Aragorn, who goes by the nom de guerre “Strider” so much? It’s because Aragorn is unpretentious, self-sufficient, self-sacrificing, and yet dangerous and mysterious at the same time. Aragorn gets things done, even when those around him don’t realize it.  And when those around him do get to know him, they are astounded at just how powerful, efficient, and clever he is.

Yes, Strider is a misunderstood man, as Mr. Butterbur, the bartender at the Prancing Pony, the inn at Bree says,

He’s one of them rangers. Dangerous folk they are — wandering the wilds. What his right name is I’ve never heard, but around here, he’s known as Strider.

Strider and the rest of the Rangers don’t really have a home, and so it is also with Product Cost Management in most organizations. It’s very rare to find Product Cost Management a department that is not a part of a larger organization. And, it is always seems to be the red-headed stepchild of that organization.  No one really knows exactly who these guys are or what they do, except that “I think they know a lot about cost and manufacturing stuff.”  Product Cost Management never seems to fit in with the organization in which it has been placed, and everyone is always wondering if it really belongs in another organization.

So where does product cost management belong in the organization? That’s a difficult question because Product Cost Management relies so heavily on information from four different organizations. In order to do their work of profit maximization, expert in PCM deep domain knowledge of the following:

  • What is the geometry a part, a subsystem, a product, and how does the geometric features, tolerance, and materials of these physical items relate to their costs?
  • What is the costing structure of the organization, what are its overhead rates, what are its labor rates?
  • What suppliers does the organization have and what are the cost structures of these organizations? What are their manufacturing capabilities?
  • What is the organization’s internal manufacturing capabilities?

Where Product Cost Management lives in the company Hiller Associates

These are very broad pieces of information that are flung across the organization. If we look at the figure above, we see that these pieces of information are hidden in the four main functions of a manufacturing company: engineering, finance, purchasing, and manufacturing. Product cost management, like the Rangers in JRR Tolkien’s trilogy, seems to live in the no man’s land or wilderness between these organizations, where few people from any of the four organizations are comfortable operating.

Why are most people so uncomfortable operating in this nexus? Well, that’s a subject for our next post.

 

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