It costs our customers to own our designed products. It costs them initially to purchase it, but it also costs them to use it, maintain it, repair it, and eventually dispose of it. And it costs our company in ways too, like processing, training requirements for customers, and warranty repair costs.

Life cycle costing can help our team choose between design alternatives, like alternate design options, features, manufacturing methods or suppliers. This type of analysis is a big topic in certain sectors of design like civil, transportation, construction, and capital equipment. But, we can use it for our smaller product designs, too, to compare our design choices - where it makes sense.

Visit the podcast blog at www.QualityDuringDesign.com for equations, an example life cycle cost analysis, and a recommended book.

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ABOUT DIANNA
Dianna Deeney is a quality advocate for product development with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, which helps organizations and people improve engineering design.