Using cost adjustment factors for linked materials

You can direct aPriori to apply an adjustment factor to the value of the Unit Cost field of a linked custom material whenever the value is copied from the source material. You do this by specifying the adjustment factor for the linked custom material in the Material Factors table. When you specify an adjustment factor, the value of the Unit Cost field for the custom material is maintained as the product of the adjustment factor and the value of the source material's Unit Cost field.

Suppose for example that your company has its own material prices, but you would like those prices to be adjusted automatically when the aPriori Regional Data Library updates are applied, to follow the same material market pricing trends. You can accomplish this with cost adjustment factors.

Follow these steps to specify an adjustment factor for a linked material:

  1. Create a linked custom material or link a custom material.

    The screen capture above shows the creation of the linked custom material 01ABSTest. It is linked to the baseline material ABS, Glass 10%.

  2. In the Material Factors table, expand the process group that includes the custom material. The custom material is displayed as a row under the process group.

  3. Update the Adjustment Factor field for the custom material. This specifies that the unit cost of the custom material should be equal to the unit cost of the source material multiplied by the specified adjustment Factor.

  4. Click the Publish icon on the Digital Factory Manager toolbar.

In the example shown in the screen captures above, an adjustment factor of 1.25 is applied to the custom material 01ABSTest. Before the adjustment is applied, the new material and its source material have the same unit cost.

After the adjustment, the custom material 01ABSTest has unit cost $5.833, which is the product of the source material's unit cost ($4.667) and the adjustment factor (1.25).

Now when the aPriori Regional Data Library and therefore the source material cost is updated, the custom material cost also will update automatically with the adjustment. If the unit cost for the source material ABS, Glass 10% is updated to $4.53, for example, the custom material 01ABSTest unit cost is updated to $5.663 ($4.53 * 1.25).