A Costing Methodology for Products Based on Emerging Micro and Nano Manufacturing Technologies

This paper introduces a simple costing methodology adopted in a European research project for comparing the cost of alternative manufacturing routes when designing new innovative micro and nano products. This methodology has been specifically developed to assess the product development implication of emerging manufacturing technologies, which might still be under development in research labs. To illustrate the proposed methodology, its application to the costing of a microfluidic system for a lab-on-chip device is described, highlighting how such early cost estimation can be considered concurrently with research challenges when making design decisions at the research stage.