Product Cost Drift Analyst
Finds the products you are quoting below the margin you think
Component prices cost you $67K this period: margin falls from 58.3% to 53.1%.
4 products, 17,500 units. Cost per unit is up on 4 of them, and margin is 5.2 points lower than at standard.
Pump P100 drifts most: 16% above standard cost, $24.7K in the period.
The biggest single driver is Main board in Controller C7: $17.2K in the period.
Whether the price rise is temporary and whether the product can be repriced are not in the data; the drift is current price against your standard.
Cost drift by product
- Pump P100$24.7K
- Controller C7$22.6K
- Valve V20$13.5K
- Sensor S3$6,132
Largest component drivers
- Controller C7 · Main board$17.2K
- Pump P100 · Steel housing$13.7K
- Valve V20 · Brass body$9,620
- Pump P100 · Copper winding$6,168
- Sensor S3 · Sensing element$5,246
- Pump P100 · Assembly labour$3,600
Cost per unit above standard (%)
Products, largest drift first
| Product | Standard cost | Current cost | Drift % | Margin now | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pump P100 | $64 | $75 | 16% | 49.5% | $24.7K |
| Controller C7 | $108 | $125 | 16.1% | 41.7% | $22.6K |
| Valve V20 | $22 | $24 | 12.1% | 61.1% | $13.5K |
| Sensor S3 | $15 | $16 | 4.8% | 58.8% | $6,132 |
What to do this week
- Reprice or renegotiate Pump P100 first: $24.7K of drift and margin down to 49.5%.
- Quote the Main board increase to the supplier of Controller C7 and test a second source: it is the largest single driver.
- Update standard costs for Pump P100, Controller C7, Valve V20: they now sit well above standard, so reported margin is overstated.
Do
- Re-roll standard costs on today's prices and compare margin before deciding on price.
Don't
- Don't pass on every rise: check which ones are one-offs before repricing.
How to improve
- Add supplier price quotes with dates so the next report can tell temporary rises from lasting ones.
- Add contract prices so the next report can show which rises are outside agreed terms.
Demo
Overview
A manufactured product's cost is a bill of materials: components, quantities, scrap allowance, labour and overhead. It is built once, carefully, at introduction — then it becomes a stored number that quoting, pricing and margin reporting all rely on.
Component prices move constantly. The stored cost does not, because updating it is nobody's scheduled job and it means re-rolling every assembly the component appears in. The gap widens quietly, and the first sign is a margin below plan for reasons nobody can locate — because every report is computed from the same stale number and they all agree with each other.
Two things make this worse than a simple price lag. Multi-level assemblies mean one component's rise flows into a dozen finished products through sub-assemblies, and nobody traces it. And scrap allowances are set at introduction from an estimate; if actual scrap has run at three times that, every unit has been costed short since the first production run.
The most commercially serious output is not the drift itself. It is the list of products currently being quoted at a price that no longer clears the margin the business believes it is making.
This agent re-rolls the cost, traces the paths, and names those products. It changes no price and no bill of materials.
Benefits
Quotes that clear the margin you intend
Rather than one that was true two years ago.
The cause located
Which component, through which assembly, into which product.
Scrap costed honestly
Usually the largest single correction and never revisited.
What it does
Re-rolls cost against today's prices
The stored cost was true at introduction. Every quote and margin report since has used it.
Traces through sub-assemblies
One component's rise reaches a dozen finished products through levels nobody follows by hand.
Tests scrap allowance against actual scrap
Set from an estimate at introduction. If reality is three times that, every unit has been costed short since day one.
Names what is quoted below target
The commercially urgent output: products being sold today at a margin that no longer exists.
Ranks by volume, not by drift
A 2% drift on your highest-volume line beats a 30% drift on something you make twice a year.
Changes nothing
It updates no cost record, no bill of materials and no price. Those are decisions with consequences.
What this changes
What this changes about your week
- It takes over
- Re-rolling product costs against today's component prices and actual scrap.
- Done today by
- Built once at introduction and stored.
- How often
- Annually at best, usually as last year plus a percentage.
- Typical manual effort
- Every assembly the component appears in has to be re-rolled, through every level.
Why Manufacturing in particular. Quoting, pricing and margin reporting all read the same stale number, so they agree with each other and none of them is right. And scrap allowances set from an estimate are never checked against actual scrap.
Runs unattended
Started by you or by an event, and it finishes on its own. Nothing waits for someone to be at a desk.
The same standard every time
The two-hundredth item is held to the bar the first one was. Consistency is the part people cannot sustain.
It cannot act on its own
Product Cost Drift Analyst has no path to sending, spending or committing. That limit is why its output is safe to act on.
How it runs
This agent runs server-side through the PROMIVO runtime. Each run is logged step by step and every tool call is permission-checked before it executes.
- 1InputValidated against the agent input schema
- 2Modelclaude-opus-5 with automatic fallback
- 3Toolsextract_structured_data
- 4PermissionsRuns READ actions automatically; anything higher waits for approval
- 5OutputStructured result matching the output schema
- 6LoggingTokens, duration and every step recorded
Requirements
Integrations
No integrations required.
Before you start
- Bill of materials structure, including sub-assemblies
- Current component prices, and the prices in the stored cost
- Actual scrap or yield by operation, where recorded
- Volumes, selling prices and target margins
- Requires the All-Access plan or higher
Use cases
Before a quoting round
Which prices no longer clear target margin.
Margin came in below plan
Where the gap actually is, component by component.
After supplier price rises
Every product the increase reaches, including through sub-assemblies.
Annual standard cost roll
Done from evidence rather than from last year plus a percentage.
Pricing
All-Access
Billed monthly through your PROMIVO subscription. Cancel at any time.
Runs consume your plan allowance for agent executions and tokens. See plan limits
FAQ
Does it update our costs or prices?
No. Updating a standard cost changes inventory valuation and reported margin, and repricing is a commercial decision. It reports the true cost and the gap.
Does it need a full ERP integration?
No. It works from exports: the bill of materials structure, current component prices, and actual scrap by operation.
What if we do not record actual scrap?
It re-rolls on the allowance and says the scrap check was not performed. That is usually the largest single correction, so it says clearly that the result is likely understated.
Reviews
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