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TCO: Calculating the Right Price for the Right Belt

TCO – or Total Cost of Ownership – gained popularity in 1987 when research company Gartner Group used it to calculate the cost of owning personal computers (12manage.com). It was then quickly adopted by many other industries including manufacturing.

With dozens of engineers employed at Cambridge’s headquarters, our team worked to develop a TCO calculator that would help manufacturers compute the actual, empirical cost of such variables as length of service, maintenance time, and needs.

When purchasing a conveyor belt, the five variables plant managers and quality assurance (QA) engineers need to assess are: belt use, dimensions, speed, production time, and conditions.

In order to calculate actual cost, we look at: Belt dimensions, type, and material.

The TCO is calculated by consideration the belts that it will be ran in (max temp, time at max temp.). In a beta analysis of high temperature belts, we calculated the life expectancy of our premium Knuckleback Platinum against a competitor’s alternative in sintering environments in the U.S.

The results are noted below.

 

“If conveyors were Chevys, not only would there be a wide gap between a Corvette and a Spark, there would be many options in between. Model selection comes down to tradeoffs between features and price. The same can be said about conveyors.” -Calculating the Cost of Conveyor Systems, Food Processing