Manufacturing & Technology reaches customers and prospects throughout Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, and is an important source for news in technology and manufacturing. The Manufacturers Group Inc., the parent company of the publication, is a diversified media company providing authoritative print and online media.

Manufacturing & Technology’s monthly print readership exceeds 94,500 company presidents and vice presidents, managers, engineering, buyers, maintenance, safety personnel and others. The industrial publication primarily targets tier two and tier three manufacturing companies. The subscribing company profile typically has 10 to 300 employees and includes upper management, plant managers, design, engineering, purchasing personnel, and others.

According to leading manufacturing journalist Thomas R. Cutler in the May issue of Manufacturing & Technology, COGS reduction is one of the fundamental drivers of a lean manufacturing initiative. Used to measure the ongoing success of lean manufacturing, it fundamentally captures material, labor, overhead and tooling costs. However, COGS reduction should not be thought of as a phase in a lean manufacturing process initiative.

If lean manufacturing initiatives are reducing COGS, manufacturers must be able to accurately measure and manage costs in real time. Only real-time, predictive cost estimates can reliably be used to validate lean initiative decisions and guide corrective actions throughout all the processes of engineering, planning and production, sourcing, quality control, program management and production delivery.

aPriori’s Cost Management Software Platform enables manufacturers to better understand product cost decisions early and throughout the product lifecycle. aPriori’s Cost Management Platform empowers manufacturers to lower cost-of-goods sold (COGS), provides real-time visibility to “cost-critical” decision information, and builds critical cost knowledge to go on the business “offensive.” aPriori’s patent-protected cost management platform allows companies to assess, control, and reduce cost of goods sold by whole percentages. The aPriori Platform enables “Cost Knowledge Before it Matters.”