Engineering Effort Estimation for Product Development Projects Cost estimation is an essential process for gaining competitive advantage in the bidding phase of every project. Besides, cost estimates are also vital for effective project control. For product development projects engineering hours is the main cost item and hence estimating engineering hours for potential product development projects is an important task. In this paper a case study, which is carried out at one of the leading manufacturers and suppliers of tracked and wheeled armored vehicles and weapon systems for the Turkish and Allied Armed Forces, is presented. In the company, currently there is no structured method for this purpose. The aim of this study is to create a method for estimating design engineering hours for potential projects based on available past data. Regression tree and kNearest Neighbor (kNN) algorithm using Attribute Weighted Value Difference Metric methods are used for this purpose and the results are reported and discussed.

Defining Effort Indicators to Retrospectively Assess Engineering Change Information The engineering change management becomes increasingly important in modern product development. Since the amount of changes, the complexity as well as the cost of engineering changes increases due to the complexity of technical systems, an efficient handling of changes is crucial. Hence, a systematic approach to investigate the engineering change management regarding the effort distribution within the technical system allows to increase transparency for optimizing the change handling. This paper therefore introduces effort indicators to investigate a technical system regarding its proneness to change effort. Hence, it defines indicators which enable an assessment of engineering change effort. Furthermore, it describes an approach to calculate the indicators based on past engineering change data by using network analysis.