Concord, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/18/2006 --According to Frank Azzolino, president of aPriori Technologies, “The objective of the aPriori Strategic Value Assessment (aSVA) is to confirm the financial and strategic value that aPriori can brings to customers in a very short timeframe, approximately four weeks. “

Specifically, the aSVA validates:

- aPriori works in our customers business environment:
Verifying that the relevant production facilities and manufacturing processes can be modeled
Confirming that predictive and accurate cost assessments can be created for our customers’ products
Certifying that customers can use aPriori in their everyday tasks to accomplish product cost reductions quickly and easily

- aPriori helps customers find ways to lower product costs by demonstrating:
It can provide real-time visibility to cost information at all stages in the product development and delivery process.
It provides fast and accurate product cost estimates that can be used as daily design, manufacturing, and sourcing decisions are being made.

Customers have the opportunity to improve their approach to product cost management by incorporating real-time product cost information into all product development and delivery activities.

During the aSVA, aPriori provides the aPriori Cost Management software platform on-site to facilitate making real-time product cost assessments; design changes in the MCAD system, as well as understanding the product cost implications of various sourcing decisions, manufacturing process decisions, and material choices. The activity allows customer to experience how aPriori drives product cost reductions. Sources of cost reduction may come from:

- Better cost information during the product design process suggesting different design alternatives
- Different materials decisions based on real-time cost information
- Planning/routing/manufacturing decisions based on knowing the cost consequences of different alternatives
- Should-cost analyses available earlier in the product development cycle
- More efficient make/buy decisions based on fact based product cost estimates

The customers choose a number of representative manufactured products to validate the cost saving potential of the aPriori system. They model the production facilities; those facilities may represent internal production facilities or the facilities of suppliers or vendors. The goal of the aSVA activity is to generate accurate product costs for the representative products and to explore realistic product cost reduction scenarios.

During the aSVA, aPriori provides a 4-day on-site session that includes solution education, orientation of the application, and hands-on use. The training is for representatives of all user communities who impact and manage product costs (such as representatives from Sourcing/Procurement, Accounting, Manufacturing, Design Engineering and Management.)

The aSVA will conclude with a final report that summarizes the project and presents a viable business case for the long term adoption of the aPriori Cost Management software platform at our customers. This business case is based on product cost reductions that determine the ROI of the aSVA activity and as well as the projected ROI of long term adoption.

An aSVA takes approximately four weeks to complete and consists of five key activities:
1) Preparing technical environment
2) Gathering data
3) Building the production facility models
4) Using the aPriori Cost Management System at the customer’s site to validate the accuracy of product cost estimates and to explore cost reduction opportunities
5) Delivering the business case validating the applicability of the aPriori cost management system as well as short and long term ROI opportunity

To learn more about this important program go to: http://www.apriori.com/services/asva.html.

“aPriori has customers in a variety of industries including High Technology, Industrial Equipment, Automotive, and Heavy Machinery. Recent customers include John Deere, Panasonic, Thomas & Betts, Flextronics, JLG, and Dana Corporation.”

aPriori
www.aPriori.com
John Busa
jbusa@apriori.com
978-371-2006