An information model to estimate efforts of product development processes

Due to small batch series or customer orders with specific requirements, costs and especially development cost are hard to determine. Their impact on the overall costs is enormous and cannot be compensated by current production technologies. To evaluate design efforts, standardized processes are known. Common models as the VDI 2221 are therefore unsuitable due to their generic character of the process steps. They are based on ideal theoretically solutions and do not consider limitations by industrial and organizational constraints. Therefore, a more detailed process is necessary, to make a comparison possible. This paper will show an approach to estimate efforts of a design project as a mathematical function. The process is based on project requirements, the process itself and other related factors which are part of the development. The output is a method for the effort estimation.