Dell OEM, New Supply Chain Cost Calculator: Stakes and Opportunity
In this guest post, Arpita Somani introduce us
to the Total Cost of Ownership
Calculator that might helps you to calculate your supply chain costs across
engineering, development, manufacturing & support.
‘’You are a solution provider.
What you do best is drive innovation and new product designs for your
customers. What if the time available to focus on innovation and solution
development is suddenly torn between trying to scale your solution and,
simultaneously, minimizing solution downtime? This raises a more noble question
– have you ever truly analyzed the total cost of ownership for your product and
solution offerings?
Often companies, small and
large, fail to accurately track the time and resources spent on building their
own computing solutions. Ignoring spending in key areas such as resource
allocation, scalability, and solution downtime can quickly add to the
manufacturing and support costs, leaving the most generous budget allocations
falling short. The challenge of maintaining low production costs can then
impact product quality and reduce the time dedicated to what you do best –
innovation. This makes spending analysis critical to ensure an uninterrupted
supply chain and to continuously develop intellectual property. Some supply
chain costs, if unplanned, can cause a bigger dent in the budget than others –
breaking down and evaluating these costs can help increase savings through the
product life cycle.
After more than a decade of
helping OEMs and solution providers develop new revenue streams, Dell OEM began
more closely assessing the total costs of ownership and how calculating these
costs are important for OEMs to ultimately realize savings. These assessments
culminated into the development of the Dell OEM Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator.
The TCO calculator aims at
helping OEMs calculate their supply chain costs in a few simple steps, with
an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. The tool is ideal for generating a quick
estimate of cost considerations with a convenient, do-it-yourself data input.
The calculator focuses on various sub-costs within each of the three major cost
categories that comprise the supply chain expenses for any OEM:
- Engineering and development
- Manufacturing
- Support
Some key inputs into the tool
are cost optimization goals, and current costs under various cost categories.
These inputs are subjected to supply chain calculations that have been
developed based on Dell OEM’s expertise in design and delivery for over a
decade. As an output of the tool, OEMs are provided with analytics on spending
in various cost areas, and graphical representations of the maximum and minimum
spending areas. These results can be downloaded in the form a white paper that
provides further insight on typical cost factors for each of the three
categories and how Dell OEM can help reduce costs and increase efficiency by
partnering through various phases of the product life cycle, design, delivery,
and support.’’
