This invaluable reference teaches effective and practical techniques to improve the overall performance and outcome of design projects in various industries. Value Engineering highlights the application of value methodology to streamline current day operations, strategic planning in company or business segments, and everyday business decisions in the private sector. The book shows how to maximize budgets, reduce life cycle costs, improve project understanding, and create better working relationships. It explains how to gather information for the creation, evaluation, development, and presentation of new project ideas and shows how to design an appropriate task agenda and timeline.

What would happen if everyone in your company followed a disciplined approach to cost reduction? Go ahead -- imagine it. What would it look like? How can it be done? The answer -- smart cost management. Effective cost management must start at the design stage. As much as 90-95% of a product's costs are added in the design process. That is why effective cost management programs focus on design and manufacturing. The primary cost management method to control cost during design is a combination of target costing and value engineering. Target Costing Objectives: Identify the cost at which your product must be manufactured at if it is to earn its profit margin at its expected target selling price. Break the target cost down to its component level and have your suppliers find ways to deliver the components they sell you at the set target prices while still making adequate returns. Value Engineering: The connection to function: An organized effort and team based approach to analyze the functions of goods and services that the design stage, and find ways to achieve those functions in a manner that allows the firm to meet its target costs. The result: Added value for your company (development costs on-line with added value for your company; development costs on-line with selling prices) and added value for your customer (higher quality products that meet, possibly even exceed, customer expectations.)

Value Engineering (or Value Analysis) is widely used to study and apply cost-saving techniques during a product's life cycle; from design and development to purchasing and manufacturing. The implementation of Value Engineering results in "more for less", and it is rapidly becoming the favored method of planners and engineers to design parts, equipment, and products in a way that will provide the lowest possible cost without sacrificing reliability. In Value Engineering: A Blueprint, James Brown uses his vast experience to explain fully every aspect of the subject from its history to application. It takes the novice or experienced engineer through every phase of the process, step by step, and even explains how to write a VE report. Value Engineering is so important that Armed Services Procurement Regulations specify that all contracts over a stated dollar value must include either a VE program or incentive clause. Read this important book and discover how Value Engineering can contribute to your company's success.

After more than 50 years as a manager and VE pioneer, Richard J. Park presents Value Engineering: A Plan for Invention. Park demonstrates how to adopt VE as a thinking process that can enable you to increase your problem solving skills, cultivate innovation, reduce costs, improve productivity, and more. Features

Whether you are interested in enhancing your own applications of VE and LCC – or you need to understand the current methodology in order to hire a practitioner and oversee the process – this unique publication will provide the information you are seeking. The book shows you: How to organize and apply VE and life cycle costing for maximum benefit Real-life VE demonstration projects – professionally organized reports, with recommendations you can apply right now Project workbook with forms to conduct a complete VE study