Engineers - 1 - Designing For Cost by Edwin B . Dean and Resit Unal

Unfortunately, the extensive use of weight based cost estimating relationships has generated a perception in the aerospace community that the primary way to reduce cost is to reduce weight. Wrong! Based upon an approximation of an industry accepted formula, the PRICE H [1] production-production equation, Dean [7] demonstrated theoretically that the optimal trajectory for cost reduction is predominantly in the direction of system complexity reduction, not system weight reduction. Thus the phrase "keep it simple" is a primary state of mind required for reducing cost throughout the design process.