The Client
Cerro Fabricated Products (CFP) is a world class manufacturer of aluminum, brass, copper, bronze, and other specialized non-ferrous forged and machined parts. They are headquartered in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Their experience in the industry dates back to 1915. They have emerged as one of the largest Brass and Aluminum shops in North America, supplying a wide range of complex parts.
The Problem
Before making the switch to Costimator, CFP used an Excel-based program that they developed and maintained in-house. They used a series of formulas to estimate labor and overhead rates. The primary issue came about when the main developer of their in-house program left the company. "When the developer left," said Jonathan Johnson, Pricing Analyst at CFP, "so too went a vast knowledge of the inner workings of the estimating system. As a result, things like debugging, adding new features, and making adjustments to the program code took a significant amount of time." Johnson added, "Our push toward Costimator was driven by a desire to have a retail estimating system that could meet our estimating needs, while providing us with customer service and tech support when necessary."
How Costimator Helped
Costimator immediately took away any headaches that CFP had with their home grown system. With the upkeep of the software taken off their hands, Johnson claims, "We are able to dedicate more time to other, more impactful, areas of our operation." Johnson cites the Cost Modeler tool as the most important aspect of Costimator pertaining to CFP. "It allows us to build custom costing equations that are tailored to our manufacturing process. We have a number of operations throughout our process in which cost is determined by several variables. Cost Modeler's functions and tools allow us to build these operations resulting in accurate and reliable costing."
Estimating Software
