Value engineering refers to a systematic and function-focused technique for enhancing the value of processes, projects, or products to realize essential abilities at the lowest cost whereas maintaining consistent safety, reliability, quality, and performance (Kiran, 2016). The procedure improves communication across boundaries, innovation, analysis, and an understanding of various views. It represents an evidenced-based and effective tool for design improvement and continuous improvement. Value engineering optimizes the distribution of limited funds without negatively affecting the project quality (Kiran, 2016). VE can be used to assess mature products currently being managed to identify innovative cost-saving opportunities and allow clients to increase market share. For instance, shifting a product from a metal to a plastic part with an expected two year lifecycle may involve using least expensive resources and materials to last up to the end of the lifecycle. In turn, this saves the company and customer costs. The example offers an instance where the product value is enhanced through cost reduction.
Another vital factor in product development encompasses freezes. Freezes greatly contribute to product development in which numerous value engineering procedures are used in the development of a new product. Freeze in these situations signifies the endpoint of the development phase (Lee & Hong, 2015). The function of design freeze here is to describe the design stage endpoint where the description of a technical product is moved to production. Design freeze enables the planning and structuring of the design procedure, which is its main advantage. Design freeze aims to reduce the potential for additional engineering changes in which freezes eliminate cost reductions that the next product generation may require (Lee & Hong, 2015). The main feature of a design freeze point is that it represents a distinct point in time that signifies the culmination of the design stage. Design freeze points involve part freezes that represent single parts that experience freezing simultaneously. Lead time greatly influences part freezes. Parts, nevertheless, do not experience freezing at one point in time since each interface, feature, and parameter experiences freezing individually before the approval of the whole part. It is usually vital to establish first the crucial parameters that influence manufacturability, function, and performance of the entire part (Lee & Hong, 2015). In turn, this requires parameter freezes to organize the design procedure to finalize dependent decisions.
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Detailed documentation is also required throughout the entire product development cycle (Schilling, 2019). For instance, documentation is required when controlling changes in design and performance (Wao, 2014). During this time, baselines are recorded with approved specifications that can be used to define a system based on specific requirements. Detailed documentation is also required when system fabrication, testing, operation, maintenance, and logistics are required to record the product configuration baseline during the development acquisition stage. Another situation when detailed documentation is required is during the discussion of various ideas in which the drawbacks and benefits of each idea are documented for further assessment to prioritize ideas. Despite the importance of detailed documentation, there are involved costs. For instance, it takes time to write detailed documentation depending on the type of the document required, the number of pages, the product, and the quality objectives. Costs are based on the specific document requirements of the project. There are also costs involved with obsolete inventory. These costs are, however, unimportant to the preferences of customer as they do not contribute to the value of the services or products to meet customer specifications. Another drawback of obsolete inventory is that it reduces the capabilities of a firm, which in turn reduces its flexibility especially in markets driven by rapid technological changes (Schilling, 2019).
Another vital element in product development is the judicious batching of engineering change requests. Batching these requests is vital because the requests are a vital part of the change procedure for an organization (Schabacker, Gericke, Szélig & Vajna, 2015). Batching these requests also ensures that the ECR procedure incorporates manufacturing, supplier, and customer feedback and is separated from the engineering change order procedure. In turn, this enables the examination of the feasibility and the need for any change, the identification of the affected parts, documentation, and components, the estimation of costs, and the listing of the required resources to implement the change.
References
Kiran, D. R. (2016). Total quality management: Key concepts and case studies . Butterworth- Heinemann.
Lee, J., & Hong, Y. S. (2015). Design freeze sequencing using Bayesian network framework. Industrial Management & Data Systems , 115 (7), 1204-1224.
Schabacker, M., Gericke, K., Szélig, N., & Vajna, S. (2015). Modelling and management of engineering processes. Berlin, Heidelberg.
Schilling, M. A. (2019). Strategic management of technological innovation . McGraw-Hill Education.
Wao, J. O. (2014). Value engineering methodology to improve building sustainability outcomes (Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida).
