Lexmark T656dne Mono Laser Printer
Technology
Cost Consulting
Production Cost Analysis
Component Costs
Commodity Components
Proprietary Integrated Circuits
Printed Circuit Boards
For these reports, we cannot ask vendors for price quotes on parts. A price quote is a contractual process, which
results in a binding price with all of the legal conditions attached. These reports use budgetary engineering cost
estimates, which are non-binding quotes, relieving the vendor of the formalities of a real quote. Engineers that make
choices between competing components or architectures early on in the design process usually use budgetary
engineering estimates.
The purchasing power of a large corporation is considered to achieve a competitive quote. Frequently, the purchasing
group can negotiate parts costs based on much higher quantities by lumping the parts volumes for all products
purchased from a given vendor. No estimates are included in this report for the cost of licensing fees, or royalties.
For all of these reasons, in these reports, for any given component the lowest conceivable price is used.
License fees, management allocation, dead time on the assembly line, and scrap costs are not included in overhead
costs.
Specific costs for molds, dies, and progressive tooling used only on the part being estimated is listed in the tooling
column.
Quotes for proprietary and custom components and subassemblies are unobtainable. In these cases, similar functional
specifications are used to estimate the cost of the custom devices.
It is assumed that high-volume assembly methods are used using pick and place machines and SMT machinery to
populate and flow solder the board. Some boards require hand assembly of some components and these are estimated
accordingly. Computerized test of all completed printed wiring boards is assumed and incorporated into the
estimating model.
An effort is made to identify all major components by reference to IC master parts guides, vendors’ data sheets,
distributor catalogs, and advertising in current technical periodicals. Many times, however, the part cannot be
identified by the component markings. In this case, the functional area is identified and an estimate based on the
required functionality is used.
These are the staple components of the electronics industry. Capacitors, resistors, diodes, power transistors, zeners,
connectors, are examples. Fans and stepper motors can also fall into the commodity category. These components can
be categorized by voltage, power, packaging, or some other parameter and lumped together for estimating purposes.
A proprietary algorithm is used in very difficult cases as the costing method. Information such as, pin count, package
type, material type, chip dimension, technology level, and/or yield is entered, the missing data is estimated and the
algorithm calculates a cost estimate.
PCBs costs are estimated using the size and number of layers. An algorithm that computes the largest number of
boards per panel is used to arrive at the PCB cost, with adders for gold tabs, solder masking, silk screening or other
special processing.
Microprocessors and memory components are considered commodity components. Special effort is made to obtain
prices on these as they are typically higher price items.
Custom integrated circuits are among the more difficult parts to estimate. The packaging and pin count provide clues,
but the silicon content (number of gates, process, etc.) is not easily identifiable. In most cases, a cost based on the
circuit functionality and the known cost of a similar part is used. A large portion of the electronics cost can be
comprised of these custom integrated circuits due to their immense complexity. This is an important part of the
estimation process.
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