Excessive Order Engineering and Customization Costs

$200k–$1M per year in excess engineering and compliance effort plus schedule delays, as repeated manual reviews and redesigns inflate project engineering cost by 20–40% and delay revenue recognition on large processing lines. • $300k–$1.5M per year in excess engineering and compliance cost plus schedule slippage, as repeated manual compliance work adds 20–40% extra effort to engineered orders and pushes delivery dates, triggering liquidated damages risk and lost follow-on orders. • $500k–$3M per year in avoidable engineering and customization cost across plants, driven by 20–40% excess engineering hours on ETO projects, plus hidden margin erosion from under-costed quotes and repeated rework that finance cannot see early enough to act on.

Cost accountants back-calculate engineering and customization costs per order using ad‑hoc spreadsheets, email threads, and engineer feedback instead of structured configuration and costing data. • The analyst manually reconstructs each custom configuration by cross-checking CAD printouts, PDFs, email threads, and ERP notes, then logs findings and cost attributions in personal Excel files and ad‑hoc SharePoint/Network folders. • They copy previous project documentation, adapt it manually in Word/Excel, and track open compliance issues in spreadsheets and email threads, relying on individual memory of past projects to judge whether a new configuration is 'close enough' to an approved one.