Development of TCO Concept in Normet Group

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to start development work in the case company Normet Oy, underground mining and tunneling equipment manufacturer located in Iisalmi, Finland. The need for development was found from the current TCO concept. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is one of the most effective cost management tools which estimates all hidden costs beyond the purchase price during the ownership period of the equipment. It includes elements regarding the maintenance, operation and downtime of the equipment. This development work was necessary as the customer demand for TCO calculations is constantly increasing. The old Microsoft Excel based TCO concept had many major issues such as it was time consuming and required manual data updates.

The basic ideology was to develop a new TCO platform in the Microsoft Power Bi system. Power Bi system is able to collect live data like machine structures and pricing information which play an important role in TCO calculations. It also has great visualization possibilities and a simple online user interface. The new system provides the possibility to compare costs between diesel and electric driven machines. This comparison reveals the cost saving potential of a battery electric vehicle (BEV).

As a result of this thesis project, fully functional TCO platform was created for Normet machines using the Power BI system. With this new system, customers are able to create instant TCO according to customer specific values. The first draft of the TCO calculation platform is based on Excel data source but after creating the SQL-data base the data comes straight from its original source program, Sovelia. After further development this system will be based on the live data which enables creating TCO calculations according to the customer specific machine structure and relevant pricing information.