Bentley, a Company with a Long Tradition: Reducing Cost Systematically

Reliable cost controlling with FACTON costing solution and FACTON Content, a worldwide production and costing database.

With FACTON costing software, Bentley is able to significantly reduce product cost. For the first time with FACTON, Bentley holds a central database for purchasers and developers which contains reliable and up-to-date costing information. The information in the database provides the company with decisive details regarding “make or buy” and detects savings potential in purchasing. Further savings potential for Bentley is created with the FACTON Content module. The database includes transparent information, comparison values, and benchmarks for all expense factors of product manufacturing worldwide. It enables the purchasing department to evaluate prices independently and thus establishes an excellent basis for negotiating with suppliers.

OUR CUSTOMER

British automotive manufacturer Bentley Motors is a manufacturer of high-performance luxury cars based in Crewe, Cheshire. The company, which was acquired by the Volkswagen group in 1998, was founded by Walter Owen Bentley in 1919. Today, Bentley has 4,000 employees worldwide with branches in the United Kingdom, the USA, Germany, Japan, Singapore, China, and the Middle East.

REQUIREMENTS

In 2001 Bentley designed a department that was to support purchasing and engineering in price formation and price analysis. The action taken was aimed at identifying and tapping savings potential and thus reducing product cost. Soon, the cost engineering department realized that it needed a new costing software for this task in order to enable purchasing and engineering to work together efficiently. This was the only way the company could find out whether, for example, an in-house development of a component was cheaper than third-party production of the component. This exchange of information was impossible with the conventional Excel tables which Bentley had used formerly to base costing on.

THE PROJECT

In June 2005, FACTON's Product Lifecycle Cost solution was introduced at Bentley. The software featured a standard costing tool for each department for the first time. Additional requirements like adapting CAD-models, parametric design of costing and a database with basic industry data was part of the introduction. The FACTON Content database contains more than 5,000 industry specific datasets from the fields materials, semi-finished products, machines, manpower, and process cost in different countries. The data is updated regularly and supplemented by Bentley’s experience values. Independent evaluating of purchased parts enables purchasing to more intelligently negotiate with suppliers. Savings potential, which is created by different manufacturing methods or locations are directly presented to the supplier and negotiated. Savings were achieved immediately upon implementation of FACTON and continue to grow as their knowledge database has increased.