It draws on computer-aided design and intelligent cost models to generate detailed manufacturing analyses and cost estimates. It also helps to quantify the impact of changes to product design, materials, manufacturing processes, volumes and location. The newest version, aPriori 2012r2, allows for the importing of complex bills of materials from enterprise resource planning, product lifecycle management and other applications. BOMs can be organized by unique function groups. Users can deploy the aPriori cost engine to calculate costs for new components and subassembly designs, and compare them with the target cost. In addition, virtual production environments can be configured to inherit material and machine data and cost model logic from other VPEs. As a result, customers can more easily expand cost scenarios, study the impact of new tradeoff decisions, and streamline system maintenance.
