Publications

Author : Armin Maes & Sebastian Meindl

Description : The challenge of purchasing in the mechanical engineering industry is primarily to secure acceptance and support for the purchaser’s approach in fields commonly controlled by the technical departments. Value analysis and value management offer expanded options for action and significant potentials of success for purchasing officers. This paper shows how industrial purchasing can make value analysis and value management a success within purchasing and at eye level with the technical departments.

Author : Kurt Lieblong

Description : The Florida Department of Transportation implemented its Value Engineering in 1978, nearly 30 years before the United States federal mandate for highway projects. Early on the department realized the benefits that this improvement process could bring to its projects, processes and standards. Not only could you get the best value out of the limited infrastructure budget, but it also improved the communication and synergy between department employees. This presentation will highlight several of the elements of FDOT’s VE program that has led it to becoming a recognized leader among US VE programs.

Author : April Hiller

Description : Value Engineering (VE) is in a current state of crisis. Not only is there a lack of understanding of what it truly means to those with exposure to it (vis-à-vis VE as being viewed purely as a cost-cutting measure), there is an overwhelming lack of exposure to it at all. Increasing competition from other value-enhancing techniques and systems (e.g., Lean methodologies, systems engineering, Lean Six Sigma, operations research, etc.) means its market share is diminishing at a furious pace. This results in several consequences that make it even more difficult to ensure VE’s future.
This paper communicates how certain language, rivalries, and concepts have impacted the market for business and product improvement methodologies, while presenting certain creative branding approaches to overcome the barriers to increasing market dominance for Value Engineering as a whole

Author : Chien-Ming Lai

Description : The paper reviews how VE and Green VE principles were applied to an LRT project in Taiwan through a review of 4 case studies. A total  cost savings of 251 million NTD and carbon emission reduction is 5,323 metric tons were achieve. In this paper, the concept, research method, analysis processes, carbon emission calculation, and the results of the combination of value engineering and carbon reduction technology (green value engineering) are represented.

Author : steVE Holmes

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Strategic planning is used to set organizational goals and priorities. Maintaining the status quo is not a viable tactic for organizational survival. Rapid and strategy informed change is necessary for success. This presentation demonstrates how value management can be used to develop a strategy map for an organization. The use of function diagramming establishes the how and why behind the strategy map. By using elements of the VA job plan, your team can agree upon, develop and prioritize strategies and tactics.

Author : Laura Kingston

Description : This presentation discusses how value analysis and functional performance specification assisted in the development of a successful IT solution implementation and supports decisions for on-going maintenance of the IT solution. What requirements are needed for software affecting a broad spectrum of users across an organization? How do you keep most of the users happy most of the time and spend the budget on the most beneficial functionality? How do you educate users on the trade-offs that may need to be made to meet varying needs? How do you make an IT project successful? How do you select what on-going enhancements should be made to the software. Value analysis was used to help answer these questions for two software solutions with different business histories and challenges.

Author : Anna Schandl

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Author : Subbiah Gopalakrishnan

Description : ND is a major cylindrical lock product in Schlage commercial portfolio which offers a variety of functions. Among them is a ND offering that can accommodate a competitor Cylinder. This product claims its importance in a situation where a customer wants to replace the existing lock with a Schlage lock while retaining his old key system. Customer complaints surrounding installation difficulties, misalignment and interference of components resulted in the discontinuation of this function. A root cause analysis performed on the failure, along with application of a VAVE approach not only gave us a robust design that addresses all the concerns but also allowed us to arrive at a cost effective design thus, efficiently bringing the product back to the market.
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Author : Korneilia Zarandne Vamosi

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Author : Angela Serra

Description : The paper reviews how the TRIZ methodology has been applied to specific case study (Low Pressure Turbine Rotor and Exhaust Diffuser), finding productivity opportunities, followed by a discussion of the DTC strategies that commonly used in GE Oil & Gas and pros/cons of using this tools for specific problem solving. The comparison involved Should Cost, VaVe, 3P and TRIZ. The purpose of the project carried out was to find design to cost opportunities on Gas Turbines. The aim was to improve product efficiency, reliability and availability, while minimizing impact on product cost and simplifying production process.

Author : Dorine Cleton

Description : The City Council of Rotterdam wanted to redevelop a low income densely populated area of the city using a public private partnership with a short timeline.  Value Engineering was used as a method to improve the plans of the project and to prevent time consuming law suits from stakeholders. This paper shows how Value Engienering together with a mediated Public Private Neighbourhood Partnership was used to involve the community and resulted in beneficial changes to the bus network at the Netherlands busiest bus transit station. . 
 
Urban redevelopment has significant impact on the lives of the people in the designated area and many of these projects are received with distrust and resistance. PPBS is a special form of mediation dedicated to urban development projects. The purpose of PPBS is to avoid these emotions, by bringing together the stakeholders in an early stage of a project. Value Engineering played a decisive role in this project as the main part of PPBS.

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Author : Rahul Nagalkar & Ann Jamison

Description : The classic Value Engineering (VE) study assessing conceptual and preliminary design phases of a project offers significant value in impacting the engineering design of a project. However, on large infrastructure projects the effectiveness of VE beyond the 30% design phase begins to wane as many of the key project elements are already worked through with community stakeholders and jurisdictions making them difficult to modify. The value of a VE workshop at 60% or 90% level of design is greatly enhanced by shifting the subject matter expertise focus to the actual construction of the project. Construction focused VE’s at the later stages can be very effective in supporting the development of well thought out cost estimates, schedules, contract specifications, and ensuring a solid set of bid documents. The benefits can include reduced change orders during construction, improved risk mitigation/risk management, improved bids and better stakeholder interface and improved follow through on stakeholder commitments.

Author : Warren Knoles

Description : The Lexington Blue Grass Airport’s Taxiway Safety Enhancement Program was to be phased over a five-year period to match the available federal funding allocated to the airport. Such five-year phasing unavoidably introduces risk that construction costs may rise more than current estimates, and/or out-year allocations of funds may be less than current estimates.
 
Thus the project design team thought it prudent to identify and develop options for reducing the project costs as a risk-management approach for the airport. The design team subsequently commissioned an internal value analysis workshop (which utilized a compressed value-methodology job plan) to identify and develop such options. This paper summarizes the process and the ensuing results of the value analysis workshop along with some lessons learned and conclusions drawn from this application of the value methodology.
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Author : Stuart Sokoloff

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Author : Paola Mainardi

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Author : Xiaoqi Zhang & Vince Thomson

Description : It is difficult to deliver products on time and within budget, and with ever increasing product complexity, the design of a product suffers greater risk of undermined estimation for project completion. Bashir and Thomson (1999a) introduced a method based on functional decomposition (FAST diagram) and a product complexity metric to estimate project effort. The present paper introduces a new complexity metric from the perspective of knowledge. A product is considered to be the result of integrating knowledge-intensive functions; so, the metric measures the complexity of individual functions as well as integration tasks. The application of the new method is illustrated with an example of a hydroelectric generator.

Author : David Wilson

Description : This presentation provides an overview of the value process and presents several key strategies using a case study approach to demonstrate how the value program was utilized to enhance this critical infrastructure project.The Regional Municipality of York’s new sanitary servicing strategy for planned development growth in the Upper York Region communities of Aurora, Newmarket, and East Gwillimbury, identified the need to sustainably treat wastewater generated by this future development within the Lake Simcoe basin. The strategy integrates three key components - Water Reclamation Centre (WRC), modifications to the York-Durham Sewage System (YDSS), and a total phosphorus off-setting program.
 
An innovative value engineering study was undertaken to further enhance the value of the Water Reclamation Centre. The Region envisions the WRC to be a key sustainability component of its environmental stewardship and this objective has influenced the design of the facility. A unique feature of the WRC will be its capability to utilize the advanced treatment processes to produce reclaimed water for potential appropriate area customers. The facility will also serve an educational tool to illustrate how advanced wastewater treatment can contribute to sustainability.
 

Author : Hsin Yuan Yu

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Author : Istvan Tarjani

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Author : Lori Brake

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Author : Marc Pauwels

Description : This paper gives a short overview of the product development process against the background of intercultural aspects. It begins with a description of the basics of culture and the basics of the product development process. The Value Analysis product development process is modified for Intercultural Product Development. The paper is concluded by a comparing the differences in lawnmower design between Germany and England. .

 

Author : Stephen Holmes

Description : Today’s market place is highly competitive, with significant downward pressure on margins and increasingly high customer expectations of performance. New product introduction timescales are constricted in order to deliver first to market and increase competitive advantage, in parallel increased cost pressures at point of launch and positive contribution margin expectations during ramp up reduce the scope to pass cost challenges down the chain to serial product cost out programs. Enhancement of traditional New Product Introduction through Design to Cost and Value therefore becomes critical to drive customer value whilst also delivering product to launch phase with acceptable margin. The result of this is to ever more closely tie together supply chain strategy, technology development and concept design such that the cross functional team is engaged during all phases within NPI to deliver cost efficient and value enhanced solutions. Therefore developing cost models and affordability targets by function during concept, a common strategy between supply chain and engineering and supplier input to concept design iteration becomes critical to NPI success. Furthermore this approach is required to enhance development velocity through rapid decision making and reduced rework in order to support the time to market challenge and avoid additional burden to the overall NPI cycle. This study will present the application of Design to Cost & Value within NPI, with experience from implementation within GE Distributed Power for a new product and for an existing product upgrade program.

Author : K S Deep

Description : Bottoms up should cost enables corporations to better understand cost structure of their product. For should costing to be trust-worthy and useful, a validated cost model is mandatory. A bottoms up should cost model is comprised of components like material, machine, process, and cost algorithm. In order to validate models, one needs to validate all these components to match the physics of the process and rates applicable for the particular organization or region of manufacture. Due to innumerable variables involved and lack of well-defined baseline data, validating a cost model is very challenging. In this study we present a systematic and physics based approach that can be adopted by organizations to validate should cost models. We discuss the process and challenges involved in doing such a validation and showcase key use-cases of a validated should cost model during sourcing negotiations and design to cost studies.

Author : Erika Ikeda

Description : This paper highlights an innovative application of VE in the food service industry in Japan, specifically the standardization of lighting in a major restaurant chain. One of the challenges faced by the design team was that the customer impression of the lighting varied by location within the restaurant. The VE team established a value index on customer satisfaction based on brain wave analysis of the customers.

Author : Won Jin Sunu

Description : Korea’s best ice maker manufacturer utilizing VE/VM methods is leading the global refrigerator ice making with energy saving of 50% compared with the competitors coupled with creating cost savings over life cycle period of 116 times over the first year’s cost savings. To produce the world class results, the VE/VM methods are utilized extensively. The Enhanced FAST with Sensitivity Matrix is used for enterprise level planning during the implementation phase. After defining the functions, the FAST, Function Analysis and Value Indexing using Paired Comparison Analysis are used in streamlining the functions and processes resulting in cost reduction of 27.4%. Also, for the new technology development, innovative ideas and concepts are developed using TRIZ Technical Contradictions with Inventive Principles and Lotus Blossom Technique, which contributed significantly in reducing the energy consumption by 50% or a total of 42.1 kWh per year.  
The most important performance of VE/VM is to institute an entire organization with innovative minds and capability focusing on the human aspects pursuing the excellence of VE/VM producing VE/VM specialists who contribute for the best of the company as well as in the society by increasing the intellectual capabilities tremendously. 

Author : Koen Schmitz & Timme Hendriksen

Description : Are Value studies enough to ensure that the organisation receives maximum value for money? The answer is no. Research on the effectiveness of the ProRail Value Management programme shows all conditions for successful Value Studies are met, resulting in a lot of Value adding proposals.
Unfortunately the full Value potential is not realised. To reach this potential, three aspects need to be addressed: 1) timing of the Value-interventions, 2) implementation of results and 3) a continuous focus on Value throughout the project-lifecycle, looking at a project from a business goal perspective.
The management of Value needs to be an integral part of the project. Therefore we introduce Value Control as an addition to the Value Management Framework. In this paper we will first explain the ProRail context, then describe the research-results and finally introduce our proposal for Value
Control.

Author : Martyn Phillips

Description : The paper discusses how to ensure that programs and projects can be influenced to start “on the right track” and remain viable in terms of: yielding best value and return-on-investment; delivery within the specified timeframe and allocated budget; stakeholder affordability; and be adjusted, as necessary, to suit changing conditions.

Author : Renee L. Hoekstra

Description : This paper is about improving facilitation skills by better understanding the roles and responsibilities as well as the many of the skills required. Facilitation skills are critical skills to leading VE teams. To ensure quality outcomes from VE studies and teams, much depends on the effectiveness of the facilitator/ team leader. This includes work that must be accomplished by the facilitator in the pre-workshop phase, not just the workshop phase. The facilitator/team leader role is a very important role to the success of any study, however, it is also very important to continue to grow the viability of value engineering.

Author : Mark Watson

Description : VE is a project-management tool that project managers should employ to improve their project. The definition of improvement can vary depending on the project manager's and the stockholder’s vision of the project. Although traditionally VE is considered a cost-control process, it can be utilized in a variety of ways, such as: defining project goals, improving schedule, and as a means of solving engineering problems. When the project manager understands and applies the basis of the VE process, it becomes a tool similar to TQM, critical path scheduling, and estimating. When the project manager takes control of the traditional VE process and integrates it into the project, they eliminate much of the uncertainty of the VE process. Understanding and applying VE as an integral part of the project-delivery process will allow the project manager to utilize the benefits of VE and in the end create a better project.

Author : Holly Whipple

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Author : Prasad V. Rayasam

Description : This paper discusses how design for manufacturability can result in creating a lower cost product to meet all performance targets. Integration and collaboration between design and manufacturing teams result in questioning legacy product features and developing new ones that meet performance & manufacturing criteria. In this paper we discuss one specific example of design for manufacturing of airfoils for modern day Turbines. Generation of 5-axis CAM toolpath for airfoil machining is a complex process. There is high value in designing “manufacturable” or producible airfoil CAD models at the design phase to ensure reduced rework to fix geometry inconsistencies during the manufacturing phase. We discuss common issues faced during machining of airfoils and how they can be mitigated with better airfoil design in conceptual design phase. Though authors did not explicitly follow SAVE recommended value engineering steps during the execution of this project, in hindsight, the mindset required and employed by entire global team was no different than the spirit of value engineering. 
 
The main challenge faced in creating such mindset is many times lack of awareness and in-depth knowledge of design requirements by manufacturing engineers and lack of manufacturing constraints and cost functions by design engineers. One of the important enablers for breaking these barriers between design and manufacturing is CAD-CAM framework. What we learnt is the need for same set of tools or seamless integration of tools that is transparent to users in both communities and also need for “real time” feedback during design of features. An analysis was carried out of common problems faced during airfoil machining which are attributable to geometric inconsistencies. Algorithms were built to identify these geometry inconsistencies. These algorithms were used by preliminary airfoil designers to fix the identified problems in design phase. A steam turbine blade that was manufactured at GE Power business is used for this study. The results helped identify the airfoil geometric inconsistencies upfront and avoidance of re-work and failed toolpath creation during airfoil machining in the shop, resulting in several thousand dollars of benefit. Equally importantly, the process followed especially building an inter-disciplinary global team of design engineers and supply chain engineers/machinists has proven to be a best practice that is being replicated for other projects.  

Author : Manuel Teles Fernandes

Description : This paper brings a new perspective of “value” and “Value Analysis” to professional practitioners, scholars, trainers and students in VA, VE and VM as defined in the European Norm EN 12973:2000.  Value Analysis (VA), as it was originally conceived, was defined and applied mainly as a cost cutting tool, in order to make products more competitive in the market place.
 
Many different and alternative applications of the value concept and of its original methodology have taken many professional practitioners and scholars to theorize and apply new and derived concepts and methods. This paper introduces a new and more comprehensive process in the discipline of Value Analysis (VA) to incorporate cultural value and perception value into a revised Value Analysis process.The tangible and intangible dimensions of value, namely “use value” and “economic value”, and “cultural value” and “perception value” are incorporated into the process. A redefinition of Value is introduced such as “emotional attributes” and “utility attributes”, “esteem service functions” and “use service functions”, and “soft-product cultural functions” and “hard-product technical functions”.
 
 

Author : Mike Pearsall, P.Eng., CVS

Description : A VA study on safety warning systems for Snow Plow equipment resulted in a new standards that are predicted to result in a 10% improvement in driver reaction to snow removal equipment, improving driver safety and a reduction of equipment downtime. The study was the first to bring a research based approach to developing and testing safety warning systems for snow removal equipment. The VA team for this study included members with experience with the harsh operating conditions of snow removal equipment, knowledge of equipment manufacture, equipment markings and lighting, knowledge of human factors and the latest science on driver perceptions and reactions, and general knowledge of operating fleets of equipment. As a result of Ontario developing a standard through this VA study, the Transportation Association of Canada adopted Ontario’s standard as a recommended practice. Therefore, drivers across Canada will eventually benefit from an improvement in the consistency of snow removal equipment visibility and they will therefore be better able to respond appropriately when approaching snow removal equipment. Learn how Ontario planned for the study, staffed the team, and followed up the study results with in field testing.

Author : City of Calgary Corporate Project Management

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 City of Calgary Value Management Standard

Author : Pinky de la Cruz, Mustaq Rabbi

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The City of Calgary had identified a need to replace or renew some downtown fire stations. This presentation shows to asset managers the application of Value Management to develop a strategic asset management plan.

Author : Dr. Jan Alpenburg, Dr. Paul Scarbrough

Description : This research study describes how Target Costing (TC), which is strongly associated with the Value methodology, was attempted as an addition into a traditional Stage-Gate (SG; Cooper, 1990) product development process. A case study was undertaken with the Construction Equipment Group, a manufacturer of heavy construction articulated haulers in Sweden and their attempts to implement target costing. Value Engineering use is limited to target costing during the concept phase and was found to be ineffective in application. The study also found conflict between the Stage-Gate method and TC that is consistent with criticisms of SG raised by Sethi and Iqbal (2008). This includes limitations to learning due to truncation of sub-projects without the iterations in TC.  Aspects of Target Costing that are in conflict with SG-type design processes are identified, in particular, the lack of effective use of Value Engineering and Quality Function Deployment.

Author : Kyle Schafersman

Description : The planning and design process already generates alternatives to meet the stakeholders’ needs within available budget, and there are already multiple reviews throughout the project development process to ensure projects stay on schedule and on budget. So, why are we forced to do VE?  This paper will define the function of value engineering within project management. It is intended to provide support to the VE Community of Practice when communicating with project managers, designers, executive managers, stakeholders, consultants, and others on the specific purpose of value engineering and why it is uniquely different than any other planning, design, review, or problem solving processes currently employed to deliver projects. This paper will spell out what has to be done and/or accomplished to be considered VE and how someone can substantiate it was accomplished properly.

Author : Donald Parker

Description : This paper provides a case history in facilitation using  a Value Index – Highway Function. Using a Value Index was the  leading cause of the success of a VE Workshop on a 4.3 mile highway project. The VE Team Leader who was not knowledgeable in highway design, led a study of experienced subject matter experts and overcame skepticism through the use of the Value Index.

Author : Raj Pillai & Anita Lukose

Description : A case study from Sobha Limited, a global leader in the construction industry, in the application of value management on construction activities for a high rise residential building in India. environment. Materials constitute 60 % of construction cost and one of the major material cost is concrete. Concrete is also a significant contributor to GHG. The VE study resulted in a cost functional agreement on new products and labour practices and was able to achieve remarkable improvements in constructing a greener product more efficiently. 

Author : Mei-yung Leung

Description : The design and construction of public projects should take into consideration of the needs and wants of the people affected, especially those of elders who are easily affected by their environment. The concept of public engagement (PE) has been gradually applied in public projects in order to ensure the projects’ success and the satisfaction of the stakeholders. However, because of differences in the various stakeholders’ backgrounds, values, interests, and so on, it is not easy to implement PE successfully. For this study value management (VM) was integrated into the PE process with the aim of improving the design of a public area so as to satisfy the special needs of elders.

Author : Hein B.A. de Jong

Description : This paper highlights strategic value engineering study with four Ministries, a shipping company and subject matter experts in the Netherlands.  In this article, also the Design for Value® model is introduced and describes how the study is designed with elements of that model.
 
The area of application and scale of this case are somewhat unusual: how can four ministries and a shipping company optimise the utilization of their 12 sea vessels and reduce that number?,Design for Value model was used resulting in VE-workshops in which the fifty participants developed and agreed on how to reduce the number of ships while improving performance for their business and organizations. 
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Author : Nalini Nanrudaiyan & Yogesh Potdar

Description :  Frugal innovation aims at removing all unnecessary features from a product and reducing the cost; which, in turn, increases its market [1-3]. Frugal innovation is not about making things new, but making things better using fewer resources. In this paper we want to discuss the opportunities/ needs for frugal innovation, describe some of the frugal innovations across the globe and explain how value engineering and TRIZ trimming tools can handle the non-essential or the harmful functions of a product that can lead to frugal innovation. The paper makes a case for use of value engineering and TRIZ in frugal innovation through a case study of medical devices for low and middle income countries.  The tool described in this paper, enables private sector companies to make headway in the development and deployment of low cost medical devices which can help provide high technology health care to the vast majority of population in rural areas. Value Engineering is a systematic approach to increase the value of the product by using an examination of the function, while TRIZ is a structured and algorithmic approach to solve any problem creatively. We believe the combination of these tools will enable frugal innovation that lays a pathway to reach the ‘last mile’ of the people.

Author : Sebastian Meindl

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Author : Jim Rains

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This paper will address how to select the best  functions for the Creative Phase. There are three essential elements:

• Specific and agreed upon project objectives,

• A complete function analysis phase that results in a FAST diagram with the measured resources (cost, time, weight) for each function,

• Function selection for the Creative Phase, which means functions are used for creativity.

VA/VE gets its strength by using function oriented thinking to divert the team member’s minds away from specifics.  Ideas taken to the Evaluation Phase should also be evaluated by function. Teams need to implement the best ideas that reliably perform the function.

Author : Hussien Al-Battaineh

Description : This paper describes a methodology for improving the evaluation phase through integration of the Analytical Hierarchy Process model and expert input. By resorting to the present methodology one can quickly resolve all the inconsistencies, in part through the expert advice. As a result, the transparency of this approach allows improving the evaluation phase and the overall value engineering program enabling the participants to better justify the options that are selected as having the highest value.

Author : Hisaya Yokota & Kayo Uchida

Description : This paper summarizes four effective Short-Time VE techniques, which have been developed and practiced in Japan. VE workshops in Japan are much shorter in duration than in North America. Three case studies illustrate “4-Meeting VE” and “5-Step VE. 

Author : Patrice Miller

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Author : Agara

Description : This paper describes the Cost-out approach of an engineering team and demonstrates the importance of value engineering principles through several case studies. Value Engineering was first invented in GE in 1940s. Over the last 2 years GE has been working to resurrect the Aviation business and applying the value engineering principles to various business critical programs.
 
A global task force of dedicated “cost out/Value” engineers was formed to achieve this critical business goal. The cost out team collaboratively worked with cross-functional teams from design to manufacturing. The team visited shops, held action workouts (including classical SAVE recommended 5 day AVS workshops [2], identified improvement areas for cost reduction opportunities.