A Multilayer Taxonomy of Cost Estimation Techniques, Looking at the Whole Product Lifecycle

Product cost estimation (PCE) still draws the attention of researchers and practitioners, even though it has been extensively discussed in the literature for more than 20 years. This is due to its central impact on the company's performance. Nowadays, the adoption of cost estimation methods seems to be limited, despite the multitude of examples and applications available. A possible reason is the multitude of approaches and techniques proposed in the literature, which, instead of representing a guide for enabling possible implementations, actually create confusion and ambiguity on their appropriateness for a particular application. Hence, this paper aims to provide a systematic review of the recent literature in the field of PCE, and intensively investigates the aspects that can enable a more conscious decision on the type of technique to be adopted. This results in the identification of five different perspectives, which can be taken simultaneously into account. By combining the different viewpoints, a new multilayer framework is derived, with a specific focus on the whole product life cycle. The proposed framework can be used as a decision-making tool by both researchers and practitioners. In fact, the former group can benefit from the new structure, as a way to identify new areas of possible research opportunities. The latter group is provided an operative guide for the application in industrial contexts.