Humbel Gears: Providing precise and accurate costing quickly

Using FACTON’s Product Lifecycle Costing software, Humbel Gear Technology has significantly accelerated and standardized its calculations of their future manufacturing costs. The medium-sized Swiss company is now in a position to react appreciably faster than their competition to request for quotes (RFQ’s) from their customers. Humbel now fulfills the increasing demands of the market for faster and more reliable costing information. The company is also gaining additional competitive advantages by using FACTON’s variant analysis module to determine equally technical and more demanding transmission designs that are more cost efficient.

THE CUSTOMER

Humbel Gear Technology is headquartered in Kradolf, Switzerland, and ranks among the leading manufacturers of gears and transmissions. Their product offerings range from sophisticated transmissions for injection molding machines to high-precision gears for Formula 1. The medium-sized family enterprise has 350 employees and manufactures in three locations – Switzerland, Czech Republic and Romania.

THE REQUIREMENTS

Humbel Gear Technology uses a multitude of different technologies to manufacture gears and transmissions. For the preparation of quotes, Humbel needs to calculate the costs of each of these processes. This is a difficult and complex undertaking that requires profound technical knowledge. Until recently, the company used MS Excel to assemble the information which proved to be very cumbersome and inaccurate. Machine data, employee data and the process time calculation had to be copied and pasted from multiple spreadsheets. Missing information was mostly estimated. Humbel desperately needed a costing solution which offered all relevant information for calculations within one database in order to accelerate and to standardize the costing process.

THE PROJECT

Humbel obtained four FACTON® Product Lifecycle Costing software solution licenses in 2007. FACTON provided all relevant information for costing in one database and included a specific module for the calculation of process times, called “technology mode”. For each relevant manufacturing technology, FACTON provided templates which contain all necessary costing parameters for each particular process. The templates outline the parameters that need to be completed in order to calculate the cycle time and costs for each process. Machines and employees can now be added with a click of button. Completing a quote requires only providing additional costs such as overhead surcharges. In the future, Humbel will use the FACTON variant comparison in their development of transmissions to uncover further savings potential. In this way, Humbel can provide crucial cost reduction tips to their customers. Humbel also plans to use the FACTON solution at their business operations in the Czech Republic and Romania to have standardized costing companywide.