Total cost minimization - Essay Example

These activities relate to different fields of engineering including Textile Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Agricultural Engineering. One field of engineering that has been very dominating in all ages is the Civil Engineering. There have been unique ways and standards of construction throughout the history. Examples include carved caves to make space for living made by a nation who perished away many centuries ago, the Egyptian Pyramids whose construction reached its apogee “with the Great Pyramid of Khufu” (Freudenrich, 2012, p. 1), and Taj Mehal made by the Mughal Emperor Shahjehan, to Burj-Al-Arab that is the emblem of civilization and technological power of the present age.

A detailed study of the engineering of the past and that of now suggests that man has always practiced the most complicated engineering methods to develop sophisticated and unique structures. The fundamental factor that has changed the most between the engineering of the past and the engineering of the present age is the ways of construction. Manual work has been increasingly replaced by machines. As a result of this, more work can be achieved now and of higher quality in lesser time unlike the past, when it took several months or even years of uninterrupted labor and yet, the finishing would understandably be not very fine.

With the advancement of technology, revolutionary changes have occurred in all fields of engineering and for the most part, the changes have been for the better. Changes in Automotive Engineering Since it is integrally linked with technology, there have occurred revolutionary changes in the automotive engineering over the centuries as a result of increase in the pace of development of technology. Presently, a lot of research is being conducted to improve the competitiveness in the automotive industry on the global scale.

The academia-industry linkage is playing a special role in it. For example, presently, the focus of the researchers at Loughborough University is to develop radical and innovative technologies of automation to provide the companies working in the automation industry with different kinds of business advantages. A potential example of this is the business driven automation (BDS) project. “In this fast-moving sector, the ability to change automated assembly and production systems quickly and efficiently, at minimal cost and risk across multiple global locations, is vital” (lboro.ac.uk, 2012).

The contemporary automation systems are complicated in terms of service, integration, optimization, and reconfiguration. Benefits of Cost Minimization Cost minimization is frequently used in the process of product design and introduction into the market in order to bring the cost down and increase the profitability of business. As the name implies, this technique minimizes the costs. Cost minimization is extensively used in many fields in general and pharmacoeconomics in particular as a tool to compare different drugs that have equal tolerability and efficacy.

In the study of cost-minimization, the individual needs to identify and compare all costs that are incurred in the process of therapeutic intervention so that the most cost-effective alternative can be selected from among the interventions of equal tolerability and efficacy. The concept of cost-minimization can be extended to the manufacturing industries that have