22 PROCESS MODELS · EVERY NUMBER CITED AND GRADED

Uncover truth.
See what every part should cost.

Diogenes deconstructs your parts the way a cost engineer would: ground up, physics based, every data point traceable. Then it hands you a number that holds up in a negotiation.

Request a diagnostic Inside a should-cost
▼ SCROLL · THE ASSEMBLY COMES APART
END COVERDIE CAST A380 · $4.95 · GRADE B
VALVE BLOCKCNC 3-AXIS · HAAS VF-2 CLASS · $25.69 · GRADE B
SUB-PLATECNC 3-AXIS · $17.58
FITTINGS ×2CNC TURNED BRASS · $2.62 ea
PIECE-PART SHOULD-COST · 5 PARTS$53.46PIECE PARTS ONLY · EXCLUDES ASSEMBLY LABOR · EVERY LINE CITED
INTERACTIVE 3D UNAVAILABLE IN THIS BROWSER
Every rate traces to named public data, with as-of dates FREDBLSEIAIMFEurostatILOSTATECBNBS
22
Ground-up, physics-based process models
21
Countries with sourced labor & energy rates
100%
Of numbers cited and graded
60s
From CAD upload to a costed part
How it works

Find where the money moved. Then prove what it should cost.

The old way needs a CAD seat, a trained cost engineer, and weeks per part, and the study is stale the day it's done. Diogenes splits the problem in two. Your spend export narrows thousands of lines to the handful worth the work. Product data on those parts turns the shortlist into a number a supplier has to answer.

Track 1 · the file alone

Where prices moved

spend export›column map›supplier & category index›market benchmark

Spend-weighted, base-fixed, comparable across baskets. No should-cost here — this is movement, and it is what narrows thousands of lines to the handful worth costing.

Track 2 · plus product data

What it should cost

CAD or spec›features›routing›cycle times›machine & rates

A real ERP dump carries no geometry or material, so this track needs product data you supply. CAD earns a grade B, negotiation-safe; a parametric spec earns a grade C, directional. Never quietly promoted.

Both together

The increase they can't justify

Material is a sixth of this part, so steel up 20% moves it 3.4%. Divide the price move by the part's own should-cost move and a 20% rise blamed on metal is mostly margin.

The first thing you see

One file in. The whole spend base, ranked by the money.

Not one part at a time. Once the parts on the shortlist have specs behind them, Diogenes prices each one, compares it against what you actually paid, and sorts the spend base by recoverable dollars, so the next negotiation starts from the biggest number rather than the newest drawing. Every line opens into the teardown below it.

Below: five years of purchase history from a mid-market fluid-power maker, read in one pass. $890K a year, on a $16.5M spend base, sitting in sixteen parts. A cost-reduction program does not need to touch the other fourteen. And a purchasing dollar is not a revenue dollar: it lands on EBITDA in full, so at a 10× multiple this one file is worth roughly $9M of enterprise value.

30
PARTS PRICED · 989 PO LINES
$16.5M
ANNUAL SPEND IN THE FILE
$890K
ANNUAL GAP · 5.4% OF SPEND
100%
OF IT LANDS ON EBITDA
#PARTENGINE ROUTEGRANNUAL GAP
01
Valve end coverMFP-COV-3500 · DIE-CAST ALUMINUM
Die castingB$243,860
02
AC induction motor, 7.5 kWMFP-MOT-5300 · IE3, FOOT MOUNT
Motor windingC$198,025
03
Copper power busbarMFP-BUS-4000 · CONTROL CABINET
BusbarB$114,657
04
Gear pump coverMFP-COV-3600 · DIE-CAST ALUMINUM
Die castingB$90,506
05
Hydraulic manifold blockMFP-MAN-1100 · 6-STATION, ANODIZED
CNC 3-axisB$74,470
06
Pump housing coverMFP-COV-3400 · CAST + MACHINED
Sand castingB$52,435
07
Sandwich valve blockMFP-VBL-1100 · MULTI-PORT ALUMINUM
CNC 3-axisB$48,017
08
Directional valve sub-plateMFP-VBL-1200 · MACHINED ALUMINUM
CNC 3-axisB$18,311
+ 8 MORE PARTS CARRYING A RECOVERABLE GAPTOTAL · $889,658 / YEAR · 5.4% OF SPEND
Engine output on the synthetic fluid-power ERP file shipped with the demo: 989 purchase-order lines, 30 parts, 5 years of history ($83.6M landed, $16.5M in the most recent full year), priced against the invoiced prices in that file. That file ships with parametric specs for its 30 parts; a raw ERP dump carries no geometry or material, so on your own data the costed set is whatever you can supply product data for. Gap figures are annual. Grade B is geometry-backed, grade C parametric. The multiple is illustrative.
01

Understand the part

Before anything is priced, the solid is read: removal volume, wall thickness, and every feature the analyzer can find, each one confidence-rated.

Reading the solid · benchmark STEP file

It starts by measuring the part, not looking it up.

Diogenes reads the solid and measures what is actually there. Hover any marker to see the feature the analyzer found, its dimensions, the machining operation it drives, and how confident the engine is that it read it correctly.

DARATECH BENCHMARK SOLID · STEPDRAG TO ROTATE · HOVER A FEATURE
  • Geometry is measured. Volume, surface area, stock to remove, wall thickness, holes, pockets, counterbores and threads, all detected and confidence-rated from the CAD solid.
  • Cycle time is built from physics. Toolpath time comes from removal volume, feeds and speeds, and machine kinematics on a named machine class.
02

Understand how it's made

Cost is a consequence of the manufacturing plan, so the plan comes first. Every route the geometry allows is ranked and priced; the ones it rules out say why.

Process routing · the same benchmark part

Every route the geometry allows, ranked and priced.

Should-cost is the consequence of a manufacturing plan, not a lookup. Move the annual volume and the ranking re-sorts, because the cheapest way to make a part at 1,000 a year is rarely the cheapest way at 25,000.

PROCESS ROUTINGENGINE OUTPUT · US RATES
1,000
RECOMMENDED
Sand casting
Pattern tooling, line automation above 8,000
$25.08TOOLING ≈$4K · $4.45/PC
FEASIBLE
Investment casting
Wax tooling, tolerance capable, longer lead
$32.44TOOLING ≈$5K · $5.19/PC
FEASIBLE
Die casting
Die cost amortized over annual volume
$122.67TOOLING ≈$107K · $107.15/PC
FEASIBLE
CNC 3-axis milling
Billet hog-out, 5.76 L removed for a 340 cm³ part
$144.48FIXTURE TOOLING ONLY
RULED OUT
Closed-die forging
Trapped faces, zero draft on bosses
RULED OUT
Sheet metal
Solid billet geometry, not formable
  • Infeasible routes say why. Trapped faces, zero draft, geometry that will not form: ruled out with the reason on the row, not silently dropped.
  • Tooling is amortised, not ignored. A die that pays back at 25,000 a year is the wrong answer at 1,000, and the ranking reflects it at every volume.
Coverage

From billet to bobbin.

22 purpose-built process models, each costed from the physics of that process, plus the secondary operations that quietly carry the cost: heat treatment and finish machining are modeled, not marked up. And it is extensible: add your own processes and materials, and they route alongside the built-ins.

CNC Machining

3-axis4-axis5-axis3+2TurningMill-turn

Casting

Die castingSand castingInvestment casting

Forging

Closed-dieOpen-dieCold headingRing rollingUpset

Molding

Injection moldingThermoforming

Sheet Metal

Fiber laser cuttingPlasma cuttingAbrasive waterjetTurret punchPress brakeStamping

Electrical

Coil windingMotor-stator windingBusbarPCBA

Secondary Operations

Heat treatmentFinish machining
03

Understand what it should cost

The routing becomes a build-up: material, machine burden, labour, tooling, overhead and duty, each element carrying the public series it was priced from.

The cost build-up · valve block from the assembly above

Every element, and the source it came from.

BASIS · UNITED STATES · 15,000 / YR · 1 OPERATOR PER 2 MACHINES · OEE 85% · 3% SCRAP
MaterialFRED PPI · BA-NA BENCHMARK$4.43
Machine burdenRENT · ENERGY · DEPRECIATION · OEE$3.20
Direct laborBLS OEWS 51-4012$8.66
Setup & CAMAMORTIZED PER BATCH$0.05
Perishable toolingTOOL WEAR BUDGET$0.60
Overhead & scrapFACTORY + LABOR OH · 3% SCRAP$3.85
SG&A & profit12% SG&A · 10% MARGIN (US)$4.82
Freight & dutyLANE RATE · USITC HTS$0.10
Should-cost floor$25.69
Price currently paid$31.90
≈ $93,150 a year on one part.

$6.21 per unit over should-cost, at 15,000 units a year. That gap, line by line and every element cited, is your negotiation.

Should-cost computed by the Diogenes engine from the live rate database, on the basis stated above. Change any assumption in the cockpit below and the number moves with it. The price paid is illustrative.
  • Rates are period-correct and cited. The metal index, the wage survey, the electricity rate: each element carries its source and its as-of date.
  • The output is graded, honestly. Grade B means geometry-backed engine cost; grade C means parametric. The should-cost is a negotiation signal, not a quotation, and Diogenes says so.
The negotiation cockpit

The number moves when the facts move.

Should-cost vs price paid, line by line. When the supplier offers new information in the room, their region, their crewing, their machine utilization, their scrap, you requote the number in seconds. Machine burden is rebuilt for each region from floorspace rent, electricity, depreciation, capital, and OEE, so the machining line moves when the plant moves. Two reference lines anchor the conversation: the nominal should-cost, and an achievable floor recomputed at best-run assumptions. Every figure below was computed by the Diogenes engine on the valve block above, from the live rate database:

SUPPLIER REGION
"We can only run this in our German plant."
ANNUAL VOLUME
"Volumes are coming down next year."
CREWING · OPERATORS PER MACHINE
"One operator runs four of those machines."
MACHINE EFFECTIVENESS · OEE
"Those machines are completely maxed out."
SCRAP RATE
"That part scraps like crazy on us."
VALVE BLOCK · CNC 3-AXIS · GRADE B
Material$4.43
Machine burden$3.20
Direct labor$8.66
Setup & CAM$0.05
Perishable tooling$0.60
Overhead & scrap$3.85
SG&A & profit$4.82
Freight & duty$0.10
Should-cost · nominal shop$25.69
Achievable floor · scrap 1% · 1 op / 4 machines · OEE 90%$17.63
Price currently paid$31.90
≈ $93,150 a year on this part.

$6.21 per unit over should-cost, at 15,000 units a year. Every element cited.

Should-costs computed by the Diogenes engine from the live rate database. The price paid is illustrative.
The engine

Math you can put in front of a supplier.

A should-cost only works if every input survives scrutiny. So every input is built to.

Every data point traceable

Machine rates, labor, metal indices: each traces to a named public source with an as-of date, shown beside the number it feeds. Nothing is a house constant.

Calibrated externally

Cost models are benchmarked against independent industry references, process by process, and refined where they diverge. Where a model is still weak, it says so.

Yours to extend

Add materials, whole process models, or parametric archetypes for the spend with no CAD. Author them by hand or have the LLM assistant draft one, then calibrate it before it goes live.

04

Understand what to do next

A number is only worth the decision it changes. Where the margin drifted, which country lands cheapest after duty, and which conversation to have first.

Evidence over time

What you paid vs what it should have cost.

Two suppliers, two regions, each priced against its own regional should-cost. The dashed floors below were computed by the engine on period-correct rates, quarter by quarter back to 2021, including the 2025 duty change you can see hit the German line. The incumbent has pulled above its floor, and the gap keeps widening. The gap is the negotiation.

Rhein (DE) · price paid Rhein · regional should-cost Midwest (US) · price paid Midwest · regional should-cost
Should-cost floors computed by the Diogenes engine on period-correct rates. Supplier price lines are illustrative.
Landed cost · tariff-aware

Best-country landed cost, duty included.

Ex-works price is only the start of the argument. Diogenes builds the full landed comparison for the same valve block, with freight lanes and duty modeled from the USITC tariff schedule, and flags overpaid lanes for clawback. China is the cheapest plant and the duty takes most of that back:

GermanyINCUMBENT · HTS DUTY
$36.94
United StatesDOMESTIC · NO DUTY
$25.69
MexicoBEST LANDED · USMCA
$12.09
ChinaHTS + SEC 301/232 DUTY
+$5.15 DUTY
$17.05
Ex-works Freight Duty
Computed by the Diogenes engine from the live rate database, on the same basis as the teardown above: 15,000 / yr · 1 operator per 2 machines · OEE 85% · 3% scrap. Duty from USITC HTS, as of April 2026.
Where Diogenes fits

Built for the money conversation.

Costing tools exist on a spectrum, and each is built for a different job. Diogenes is built for operators and investors who start from a spend file and need leverage fast.

ENTERPRISE COSTING SUITES

Built for design engineering at scale

CAD goes in, cost comes out, wired into PLM across a global engineering org. Powerful when every part has clean CAD and a cost-engineering team runs the tooling.

  • CAD and PLM at the center
  • Consulting-led deployment
  • Enterprise licensing
ENGINEERING DFM TOOLKITS

Built for redesigning the part

An engineer describes the part, explores tolerances and simplification, and reworks the design. Powerful when you own the design and have the engineering hours.

  • Engineer drives every estimate
  • Deep design-side methodology
  • Part-at-a-time workflow
DIOGENES

Built for the negotiation

Starts from the ERP spend file you already have, ranks the entire spend base, and arms the supplier conversation with cited, graded should-costs.

  • Spend file first, CAD optional
  • Whole spend base in one pass
  • Runs inside your firewall
  • Priced for the mid-market
Who built this

The method comes from doing it by hand.

Daniel Schneider
Founder

Teardown-based should-cost works. The problem has always been that running it takes a lab, a trained cost engineer, and weeks per part, which puts it out of reach of the companies that need the leverage most. Diogenes exists to close that gap.

Aerospace engineer

Cost falls out of geometry, material, and the machine that has to cut it. That is why Diogenes models the physics instead of reading a number off a lookup table.

McKinsey & Company

An estimate is only worth what it survives. A number a supplier can wave away across the table is not leverage, however elegant the model behind it — so every element here is built to be defended line by line.

EY-Parthenon

Led the global Design to Value and Teardown lab network: taking products apart, across industries and regions, to find where the money actually sits.

Diogenes is that method made repeatable — the same teardown discipline, run against the spend file you already have instead of a lab bench, with every number cited and graded.

Working with us

Start small. Keep what works.

Direct material is your biggest controllable cost, and should-cost is the most credible lever in a supplier negotiation. Three ways in:

START HERE
DIAGNOSTIC

Find the money

A fixed-scope read on one spend file: where you're overpaying, by how much, and which dollars are realistically recoverable, split between re-source leverage and negotiate-in-place.

Fixed scope · days, not months
DO IT WITH US

Cost-reduction engagement

We run the negotiation cycle with your team: teardowns, supplier packs, branded leave-behinds, with fees at risk and paid on realized savings.

Fees tied to realized savings
OWN IT

Software license

Deploy Diogenes inside your firewall and run it continuously with your own people: every quarter, every new quote, every portfolio company.

Your data, your cadence
Questions we get in diligence

Ask us the hard ones.

Where do the rates come from?
Named public series with as-of dates: FRED, BLS, EIA, IMF, Eurostat, ILOSTAT, ECB, NBS. Every cost element on every part cites the series it was priced from, and the Rate Explorer shows the underlying data.
How accurate is it?
Every number carries a grade: B means geometry-backed engine cost, C means parametric. Cost models are calibrated against independent industry references and refined where they diverge. The should-cost is a negotiation signal, not a quotation, and the tool says so on every estimate.
Do we need CAD?
No. The diagnostic runs on your ERP spend file alone. Where you do have STEP or STL models, Diogenes reads the geometry and upgrades those parts to grade-B teardowns, priced in seconds per part.
What about tariffs and duty?
Diogenes audits duty paid against duty expected on every lane, with Section 301 and 232 modeled. Underpaid lanes get flagged as exposure, overpaid lanes as clawback candidates, and landed-cost comparisons include duty by default.
What if you don't cover our process or material?
Then you add it, and it behaves like everything else in the library. Three things are extensible: materials (a new grade or alloy, wired to the price series it should track), processes (a new cost model, which then routes and ranks alongside the built-ins), and parametric archetypes (a family of parts costed from a handful of driving dimensions, for the spend where no CAD exists).

You can author any of them by hand, or hand the LLM assistant a datasheet, a supplier quote, or a description of the operation and have it draft the model for you. Either way you review the assumptions, calibrate it against parts you already know the price of, and only then turn it on. The rule doesn't bend: whatever you add still has to cite its sources and carry a grade.
Where does our data live?
Inside your firewall. Diogenes deploys locally, your spend data never leaves your environment, and your team can re-run the analysis any quarter without a vendor round-trip.
Why "Diogenes"?
Diogenes of Sinope walked through Athens in broad daylight holding a lit lamp, telling anyone who asked that he was looking for an honest man. He was the philosopher who refused to take the received story at face value, and who was famously hard to sell anything to.

A quoted price is a story a supplier tells about their cost. This tool is the lamp: it walks up to the part, takes it apart, and prices it from the physics and the public record, so the honest number is the one on the table. Uncover truth. Optimize spend.

Bring one spend file. Leave with a number.

The diagnostic starts with the ERP extract you already have. If the money isn't there, you'll know that too. Every number cited and graded.

Request a diagnostic

Prefer to start smaller? Send one part and get a should-cost teardown back.