Dell OEM launches new supply chain cost calculator

Introducing the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator that helps you calculate your supply chain costs across engineering, development, manufacturing & support.

 Dell TCO Analysis Tool You are a solution provider. What you do best is drive innovation and new product designs for your customers. What if the time available to focus on innovation and solution development is suddenly torn between trying to scale your solution and, simultaneously, minimizing solution downtime? This raises a more noble question – have you ever truly analyzed the total cost of ownership for your product and solution offerings?

Often companies, small and large, fail to accurately track the time and resources spent on building their own computing solutions. Ignoring spending in key areas such as resource allocation, scalability, and solution downtime can quickly add to the manufacturing and support costs, leaving the most generous budget allocations falling short. The challenge of maintaining low production costs can then impact product quality and reduce the time dedicated to what you do best – innovation. This makes spending analysis critical to ensure an uninterrupted supply chain and to continuously develop intellectual property. Some supply chain costs, if unplanned, can cause a bigger dent in the budget than others – breaking down and evaluating these costs can help increase savings through the product life cycle.

After more than a decade of helping OEMs and solution providers develop new revenue streams, Dell OEM began more closely assessing the total costs of ownership and how calculating these costs are important for OEMs to ultimately realize savings. These assessments culminated into the development of the Dell OEM Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator.

The TCO calculator aims at helping OEMs calculate their supply chain costs in a few simple steps —  with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. The tool is ideal for generating a quick estimate of cost considerations with a convenient, do-it-yourself data input. The calculator focuses on various sub-costs within each of the three major cost categories that comprise the supply chain expenses for any OEM:

  1. Engineering and development
  2. Manufacturing
  3. Support

Some key inputs into the tool are cost optimization goals, and current costs under various cost categories. These inputs are subjected to supply chain calculations that have been developed based on Dell OEM’s expertise in design and delivery for over a decade. As an output of the tool, OEMs are provided with analytics on spending in various cost areas, and graphical representations of the maximum and minimum spending areas. These results can be downloaded in the form a white paper that provides further insight on typical cost factors for each of the three categories and how Dell OEM can help reduce costs and increase efficiency by partnering through various phases of the product life cycle – design, delivery, and support.

At Dell OEM, we are very excited at the prospect of helping OEMs truly evaluate their total cost of ownership. We encourage you to try out the tool and you will start to see the benefits of the insights provided.  If you have any questions or feedback regarding the tool, please leave a comment below.

Analyze your total cost of ownership at dell.com/oemtco or contact us to discuss further how we might be able to assist in your cost reduction efforts.

About the Author: Arpita Somani