A Recipe for Success in the Cost and Manufacturing Event at FSAE Michigan
What The Cost Event Is… And Isn’t.
Definitions
S.3.1 Cost Event Objective
The Cost and Manufacturing Event evaluates the ability of the team to consider budget and incorporate production considerations for production and efficiency.
The cost report is a written version of what it takes to manufacture your prototype vehicle, as-is, at standardized costs.
The Cost Event is split into 2 evaluations at 15 minutes each: an evaluation of your Cost Report, and an evaluation of your Cost Scenario response.
The Report is built pre-event and is typically due about 6 weeks before competition. This is an electronic Bill of Materials (eBOM) of all parts of your FSAE vehicle, broken down into manufacturing costs, material costs, assembly costs, and more. This is generated using the Online Cost Module on FSAEonline and costs are determined using the Cost Catalogs provided by FSAE to standardize costs of components.This standardization of costs accomplishes two tasks:
It sets a baseline to evaluate all teams regardless of funding, sponsorship, and access to resources
It enables students to directly contextualize their engineering decisions of material selection, manufacturing methods, and assembly processes to understand the cost impact on final product
At the Cost event at competition, cost judges evaluate the student’s vehicle on site and compare it to the costing methods in the report, checking for accuracy.
The Scenario is a prompt provided by the judges about 3 months prior to the event to challenge the students to respond to a risk-causing event. Risk-causing events in this context are events that positively or negatively impact your manufacturing timelines, your materials cost and availability, your supply line, and more. The prompt can be accessed on FSAEonline along with a rubric.
Discussion
In the past, Cost at FSAE has taken many forms. Cost also looks different overseas, so please only use this advice for the North American competitions and use discretion elsewhere. The Cost Event is not a costing exercise of a mass production vehicle; it is a standardized costing exercise of your prototype vehicle. The reader should ask: what is the difference?
In a previous life, I worked at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles as a Prototype Build Engineer. My job included managing BOMs, sourcing prototype components, monitoring prototype builds, bending and flaring an occasional brake line at my desk, and working with design release engineers to build the first prototype Wagoneers and other vehicles. Those first prototype vehicles cost probably north of a million dollars each. This was for a few reasons: parts availability, capture of engineering and tooling costs at the supplier level, and most relevant to this story, manufacturing methods used. One day, I had a meeting with a manager and he had a giant machined billet aluminum control arm sitting on his desk from a heavy duty prototype vehicle. He pointed at it, noted how much it costs, and stated that it was a spare and never made it on a vehicle. That part (when it makes it to mass production) will likely be cast or forged, and the unit cost of it would drop significantly. That manager wanted to encourage little Emily to use discretion when buying spare parts so they don’t turn into 4 or 5 figure paperweights collecting dust at the technical center. My purpose in telling this story to the reader now is to show you how cost considerations you make in the FSAE Cost event relate to something you may do in your career.
Your Formula SAE vehicle is the initial million dollar prototype made with the fancy billet control arms. We want you to contextualize the “actual” cost of your engineering work as it exists into the bay at the Cost Event using a standardized cost table. We generally know that casting, forging, stamping, etc pieces in an actual mass production setting is cheaper; however, what we don’t expect you to do is perform all the engineering design and analysis required to transition those prototype parts you’ve put on your cars to those mass production methods for the Cost Report. This is why we ask the students to cost the vehicle as it was built by the students. Furthermore, it’s very hard to speak to theoretical cast/forged/whatever parts and evaluate your costing when the prototype piece does not have those characteristics. What are we supposed to do, use our imagination? No, let's evaluate the vehicle in front of us for the Report.
The Cost Scenario is the opportunity for students to use their imaginations. They are to look at their Report costs and evaluate what could be done to reduce cost within the bounds of a theoretical prompt. The students are encouraged to use their manufacturing and design analysis skills to think outside of the prototype vehicle. They are expected to prepare a 5-7 minute presentation to a panel of judges responding to the prompt. Some scenarios we have used in the past are:
Tariffs have increased the cost of [raw material] by 50%. Discuss how this impacts the vehicle and build a 3-5 minute proposal to minimize cost to your company.
Discuss design, manufacturing, process changes to [vehicle system] to transition the vehicle from a single-unit prototype to production scenario at X units per year.
[Component] has gone obsolete at your supplier. Source a new one and present engineering and cost analysis.
The Cost Scenario is not a Sales presentation, and while creativity is a part of the engineering process, we are not particularly interested in the glitz and glam of a proper elevator pitch or other sales skills that are much better employed at the Presentation event. The Cost Scenario is also not a Design presentation, so engineering design data, while useful, is better served rolled up into summaries and conclusions, but ready to be expanded upon if asked about it. Similar to the Presentation event, we do expect clear communication of ideas, so public speaking competency is expected, as well as supporting material produced in the format required such as the one pager and a PowerPoint. Similar to the Design event, we do expect the students to perform the analysis required to back up their conclusions with a basis in sound engineering principles, as well as be able to communicate that analysis to show competency in that engineering area.
Recipe for Success
Like any good recipe you find on the internet, this article is 75% someone yapping about their life and 25% the actual recipe. I have summarized my advice for the Cost Event in bullet points below, and included elaboration in the steps. Per the FSAE rules, I cannot give any specific clarifying guidance on the Scenario other than what has already been presented and what it published on FSAEonline.
Ingredients:
10 cups of Reading the Cost Supplement and Cost Module Guide on FSAEonline before and during the Cost Report process
3 tablespoons of Engaging the technical leads, as this is an exercise for both the engineering and business teams
100g of Drawings and Supplemental Materials produced for the Report
4lb of Referencing the Cost Catalogs on FSAEonline
A dash of submitting an Add Item Request
Understanding that properly costed parts virtually always cost less than penalties, to taste
Two cases of Red Bull or your caffeine source of choice
Steps to create your report:
Start earlier than you think you need to.
Organize your parts, assemblies, and people into sections using the Cost Supplement as a guide. The Cost Supplement features instructions on how to cost composites, PCBs, and more. Several students should be involved in generating the Cost Report, as it requires engineering input from all systems. “But I’m an engineer, not on the business team! Cost is for the Business team!” Respectfully, too bad; you’re going to have an opportunity to do this stuff in many engineering roles.
Build your assembly tree for each section. Create empty sub assemblies for each section following guidance from the Cost Supplement. Examples of sub assemblies are things like “Front Suspension” or “Pedal Box”.
Add parts to your assembly trees for each part in the tree.
Cost out each part using the Standardized Cost Catalogs:
Materials
Processes
Fasteners
Tooling
Verify SINGLE PAGE drawings in PDF format (preferred) are uploaded to communicate the technical information presented in the Cost Report parts and assemblies. It is recommended that the engineering data feature items such as:
Stock sizes
Materials and mass
Layup schedules and surface area measurements
PCB layouts
Wiring diagrams with run lengths and terminations
Datasheets of purchased components
As required, submit an Add Item Request using the Rules Inquiry interface on FSAEonline more than 48 hours before the Cost Report is due. eAIRs are for items that you believe are not in the Catalogs but should be. For example, some of the eAIRs we have received for 2025 have been PLA plastic, Photopolymer Resin, and a couple of ECUs. eAIRs are processed manually and occasionally require research on our end to determine a suitable price; we are not at your beck and call, and will not process your request in time for the deadline if you are submitting at the last minute!
Review the submission requirements and fully submit the Cost Report approximately a day prior to the due date. The servers can get overloaded when all the teams are rushing to submit at 11:59:59pm. Do you want to be the team who is marked as submitted at 12:00:00 am, and therefore late, because you waited to submit until the last second?
Prepare your Cost Addenda per the guidance on FSAEonline.
Prepare your Cost Scenario response.
When you get on site at FSAE Michigan:
Deliver your printed Cost Addenda, the documentation of changes made to the vehicle since submission of the Cost Report and prior to arriving on site, when you check in at Registration. Cost Addenda are not accepted after the team has checked in. Cost Addenda can change the Vehicle Cost and impact your placement in the Cost event.
Review the site maps and schedules, as the layout changes yearly. Do not assume anything is in the same place.
Arrive 5 minutes early to your Cost appointment. No-shows will receive 0 points in the Cost event and risk disqualification from Dynamic events. Late shows will receive the remaining time allotted in their slot.
Bring the car to the Cost event. This is required per the rules. We cannot evaluate you without the car.
Bring your own copy of the Cost Report, whether it is the downloaded PDF, the portal on FSAEonline, or a printed version. This is to make your life easier during evaluation, since you have your own copy to page through while the judge has theirs.
Students with familiarity with the car should be present, and bringing tools to remove items such as the nose cone, seat, and firewall are recommended.
The judges have evaluated your report beforehand and may have a list of items to check. Not everything they check is a penalty, and explanations of deviations are a part of the process. If a judge asks you to clarify something, to point them towards the costing for a certain part, or details about some steps you’ve costed, this is normal!
Bring your supporting materials as required for the Cost Scenario.
Ask questions, and relax!