Metals

Metals companies are as diverse as any found in the many vertical manufacturing sectors. From the early-stage steel producers to the fully fabricated and finished steel component makers, the materials consumed and the processes performed vary greatly. Early-stage producers face alloy recipe management, various melting and casting processes, and optional output forms. Finished fabricators – starting with the steel producers output – perform cutting, stamping, folding, forming, welding, bending and coating processes that can be fully automated or labor intensive. These greatly varying processes and materials create a unique costing challenge for the companies that use them – especially those who are fully integrated across the processes.

Product Costing

Whether it’s an ingot or an exterior automobile door panel, product costing with ImpactECS is performed with ease. Complex – or simple – alloy recipes are managed and combined with energy consuming processing steps to create complete and accurate costs for products in bloom, billet, and slab form. When the steel is later converted to rod, rail, and coils, the product costing process must adapt to account for the varying sequential process steps, the product loss (scrap), and the various finished product forms. ImpactECS’ template approach allows a single cost model to contain and join product cost structures that vary greatly. BOM and routing structures, attributes, and units of measure can vary greatly between the product cost templates that exist in a single ImpactECS cost model. This allows integrated producers to model and manage costs at the different stages of production at the level of detail needed for each stage. In the fabricated areas of production, the costs of multiple components – subassemblies or WIP products – are easily joined to create a finished product whose cost can be fully understood. Natural cost elements, like labor or energy, can be fully understood in the context of the final finished product.