Manufacturing products produces waste that ranges from overproduction, waiting time, and transportation costs to overprocessing, excess inventory, unnecessary motion and scrap. By eliminating these wastes, production time and cost of goods sold (COGS) are reduced, and quality is improved. COGS reduction is one of the fundamental drivers of a lean manufacturing initiative. Used to measure the ongoing success of lean manufacturing, it fundamentally captures material, labor, overhead and tooling costs. However, COGS reduction shouldn’t be thought of as a phase in a lean manufacturing process initiative.

If lean manufacturing initiatives are reducing COGS, manufacturers must be able to accurately measure and manage costs in real time. Only real-time, predictive cost estimates can reliably be used to validate lean initiative decisions and guide corrective actions throughout all the processes of engineering, planning and production, sourcing, quality control, program management and production delivery.

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