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Costimator is an American-based series of cost estimating software designed to model manufacturing costs. Developed by Thomas Charkiewicz in 1982, the software is manufactured and distributed by MTI Systems of West Springfield, Massachusetts. The software is available in both a desktop and online version and has been implemented by over 1,400 companies in 22 countries.

History
Costimator was designed by Thomas Charkiewicz in 1982. Charkiewicz is a former machinist and manufacturing manager who studied computer-aided manufacturing at the University of Massachusetts. Charkiewicz had 24 years of hands-on experience in manufacturing with companies such as Pratt & Whitney and Package Machinery and used his experience to develop Costimator to assist with modelling manufacturing costs.

In 1987, a landmark against competitor "Rapid Cost" was won by the makers of Costimator. The claim was that Rapid Cost has created an indentical software to Costimator and infringed on their copyright. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Charkiewicz stated, "I couldn't believe how close they came to copying our program...even our misspelled words." The US District Judge for the case ruled in favor of Charkiewicz and ordered the Rapid Cost software off the market.

Costimator had its roots in the machining industry, but later branched out to include several other manufacturing processes. In 2002, IBM purchased a customized version of Costimator OEM from MTI Systems. The purpose of the customization was to help IBM's cost estimating team identify low-cost approaches to supply chain costs. MTI provided the software for IBM based on their requirements and also provided on-site training for the software. John Kagan, the former manager of PC Cost Management at IBM, later announced that the software had saved them in excess of $10 million in savings and avoidance.

In 2009, MTI Systems, Inc. reached an agreement with European distributor Premier Manufacturing Solutions, LTD (Stockport, UK) to market its flagship products Costimator OEM and Costimator JS to companies throughout Europe.

In February of 2011, Cimtronics and MTI Systems, Inc. also agreed to terms on a distribution partnership.

Versions and functions
Costimator also includes a function known as IQ builder which customers can use to model their own manufacturing process based off of historical data. The data was derived from the company’s customers in addition to various independent industry sources. Labor costs come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Costimator 7.0 was released in 2000. This version added fifteen additional features. These features were designed more for smaller manufacturers and includes flagging any operation as an outside service and connects the user of the software to a new outside service database. A new engineering database allowed users to specify and insert data at any point during the estimation process. It also added a project management feature which allowed the estimator to assign different jobs and tasks to multiple estimators.