F2010H009
Research on the User's Costs in Motor Vehicles Life Cycle
Economic trends, increasing inflation, growing costs of many systems and products, as well as budget constraints, have created awareness and aroused interest in the system/product total cost. Experience has indicated that a large portion of the total costs for many systems is a direct result of the activities associated with their operation, while the scale of these costs is based on decisions made in early stages of the system's life cycle. The motor vehicle industry is still the largest and strongest industry in the world and its development stage nowadays is characterized by manufacture and exploitation of a wide specter of different types and categories of motor vehicles. This research is made on user's costs of 3 different vehicles in a vehicle fleet in Macedonia. Various methods of maintenance such as preventive and corrective maintenance are taken into consideration. A Life Cycle Cost (LCC) model is a simplified representation of the real system. Its function is to abstract the salient features and aspects of the product and to translate them into a cost figure. A Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis is a process of identifying and evaluating costs associated with acquisition and ownership of a product during its life cycle. This article shows a LCC model of vehicle ownership costs. According to this model a separate LCC analysis is made for each vehicle and for 3 different regimes of exploitation. From the obtained graphs of cumulative costs of the vehicle maintenance, it can easily be determined which vehicle has a lower ownership cost. A maintenance schedule assessment presented in this research determines the vehicle availability and human resources required for each vehicle.
KEYWORDS: Life Cycle Cost - LCC, LCC model, availability, user's total cost
This abstract is supplemented by a PDF, which can be viewed here.
Session: Efficient Production and Operation of Vehicles and Components