A model based universal cost optimizer

The information flow in future manufacturing environments will be a key issue for cost effectiveness. The barrier between engineering and management is quite high. Engineers usually are not fond of the management that has no technical background and the management does not want to get involved in detailed technical discussions. Besides, there are local problems, because the persons involved in a product are not necessary in the same building but sometimes on different continents. In our paper we present a concept that is able to cope with the problems arising from the organization inside a company as well as with the locality problem. The tool is based on an abstract data type definition that allows describing cost models, which can be located anywhere on the www. Engineers can develop and maintain those models, whereas from a global point of view the models can be integrated and evaluated without being buried by all technical detail