perpart

Perpart is a term used across manufacturing, engineering, and logistics to describe analysis, costing, or management practices that focus on individual components within a larger system. The expression is not standardized and the exact meaning varies by industry and user, but it generally implies examining parts separately rather than treating a product or process as a homogeneous whole.

In cost accounting, per-part costing assigns cost elements to each component in a bill of materials, enabling more granular visibility into component-level profitability and pricing. In design and reliability engineering, per-part analysis assesses how each component contributes to overall performance, durability, and failure modes, informing targeted design changes or predictive maintenance strategies.

In software and systems engineering, per-part concepts appear when systems are decomposed into modular components with per-part interfaces and responsibilities, supporting modular development, testing, and deployment. In supply chain and manufacturing execution, per-part tracking or tagging (serialisation) records the movement, status, and attributes of individual items, which can improve traceability and quality control.

Critiques of perpart approaches include data collection overhead, potential for over-segmentation, and misalignment with practices that focus on process-level or system-level metrics. Proponents argue that the granularity can reveal hidden cost drivers and failure risks that aggregate analyses miss.

See also: bill of materials, activity-based costing, modular design, serialisation, traceability.