Manufacturability and Value Engineering
Manufacturability and value engineering activities are concerned with improvement of design and
specifications at the research, development, design, and preproduction stages of product
development. In addition to immediate, obvious cost reduction, design for manufacturability
and value engineering may produce other benefits. These include:
1. Reduced complexity of the product.
2. Reduction of environmental impact.
3. Additional standardization of components.
4. Improvement of functional aspects of the product.
5. Improved job design and job safety.
6. Improved maintainability (serviceability) of the product.
7. Robust design.
Manufacturability and value engineering activities may be the best cost-avoidance technique
available to operations management. They yield value improvement by focusing on achieving
the functional specifications necessary to meet customer requirements in an optimal way.
Value engineering programs typically reduce costs between 15% and 70% without reducing
quality, with every dollar spent yielding $10 to $25 in savings. The cost reduction achieved for
a specific bracket via value engineering is shown in Figure 5.5.
pure 5.5