Thursday, July 27, 2023

Product Industrial Engineering for Cost Reduction - L.D. Miles

Ubiquity of Industrial Engineering Principle of  Industrial Engineering

Industrial Engineering is applicable to all branches of engineering. - Engineering products of all engineering branches can be improved and cost is reduced using product industrial engineering methods.

Lesson 37 of  Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course

Lesson 38 -  L.D. Miles - 13 Value Analysis and Engineering Techniques


              Narayana Rao K.V.S.S. on Cover Page of Business Today 
October 22 - November 6, 1997




                                          
Lesson 37 of Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course


Product Industrial Engineering. 
Methods: Value Engineering & DFAM.
Product Industrial Engineering Programs:  Design To Value/Design For Value (DTV), Design to Cost, Target Costing & Lean Product Development.

Product Industrial Engineering - Course Notes


Product Industrial Engineering

27.7.2023
I am a happy. Prof. Beth Cudney, Ph.D, Professor of Data Analytics, Maryville University liked my comment. 
"Industrial engineering inputs to the product development process are important. Product industrial engineering makes significant contribution to product development."
on the post: 


'Product Industrial Engineering' is industrial engineering of products. It is continuous improvement of product to reduce its cost. Cost reduction as an important activity of engineering and engineers was advocated by the first president of ASME in 1880.  Taylor developed the method of studying and improving engineering elements based on cost data, productivity data and time measurement to reduce the cost of process to produce engineering products. Many others including Gilbreth, Maynard contributed to the development of this process productivity improvement.

C.B. Going and Hugo Diemer actually defined industrial engineering in detail first. The treatments they give is slightly different. Going emphasized the efficient conduct of the industrial organization. Diemer emphasized the factory should give a measured output with lot of certainty. Diemer presented the standardization view of the scientific management as industrial engineering focus. Both have traced industrial engineering to Taylor only. Industrial engineering is standardization (designing and planning) of factory processes so that a planned output can be delivered based on standard operating processes, equipment, working conditions, method, and motions with specified standard time. Diemer in his books in the field of industrial engineering and management wrote in detail about standardization and time and motion study.

The contribution of L.D. Miles is in the area of cost reduction of products.. He is very clear in the focus of the method that he had developed - cost reduction. But his line of attack is primarily on product design and the inefficiencies that exist in it in its synthesis. He saw an opportunity to redesign it later in the product life cycle based on an analysis of its function and alternatives available in the technology and supply market. He identified two phases in his method. Value Analysis and Value Engineering. Value analysis identifies  cost reduction opportunity for redesign. Value engineering phase redesign the part and the product in the direction indicated by value analysis.  We can see similar phases in productivity also - productivity analysis and productivity engineering.


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While value analysis and engineering is actually productivity analysis and engineering, industrial engineering discipline might have neglected Miles contribution for a long period and forced Miles to start new society to promote value engineering. But it is quiet clear that value engineering is an outgrowth of industrial engineering philosophy of cost reduction by redesign of engineering products and processes. The place of Miles is on the same pedestal as that of F.W. Taylor in industrial engineering. Value engineering attained a great success and even now a popular method. Shigeo Shingo specially made value engineering as a first step in industrial engineering in Japanese practice.

Product Design Efficiency Engineering - Component of Industrial Engineering
(Functions and Focus Areas of Industrial Engineering)

Value Analysis and Value Engineering - Miles Way (L.D. Miles)


Value engineering has for its purpose the efficient identification and elimination of unnecessary cost. First article on the topic was written by L.D. Miles in 1949.

Value Engineering - Introduction - Video Presentation
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What is Value Engineering?

Value engineering has for its purpose the efficient identification of unnecessary cost, i.e., cost which provides neither quality nor use nor life nor appearance nor customer features. It focuses the attention of engineering, manufacturing, and purchasing on one objective – equivalent performance for lower cost. It results in the orderly utilization of low cost alternative materials, low cost alternative processes including new processes, and abilities of specialized suppliers to procure items at lower costs.

Lawrence D. Miles is the pioneer of this technique. He wrote the book - Techniques of Value Analysis and Engineering - in 1961. His designation at that time was Manager, Value Service, General Electric Company. He published the first article on value analysis in 1949 in American Machinist.

Functional design is not tampered:
Inherent in the philosophy of value engineering is the full retention for the customer of the usefulness and esteem features of the product. Miles argued emphatically right at the beginning of his book, “Techniques of Value Analysis and Engineering” that identifying and removing unnecessary cost, and thus improving the value, must be done without reducing in the slightest degree quality, safety, life, reliability, dependability, and the features and attractiveness that the customer wants.

What is Value?

Miles described  four types of value.

1. Use value: The properties and qualities which accomplish a use, work, or service.
2. Esteem value: The properties, features, or attractiveness which cause us to want to own it.
3. Cost value: The sum of labor, material, and various other costs required to produce it.
4. Exchange value: Its properties or qualities which enable us to exchange it for something else we want.

Miles is clear that  value analysis and  engineering are  concerned with cost value without in anyway decreasing the use value, esteem value and exchange value.




Miles gave job plan as the procedure for value analysis. Miles clearly wrote in his book, he is primarily describing value analysis only in the book. He is not attempting to discuss how engineering knowledge will be used to redesign the product. He has left that work industrial engineering discipline to develop the method of redesigning parts and products based on the new concept for product redesign. In process or operation improvement or part improvement, engineering is essential and industrial engineers have to do engineering. There is analysis to find the basis for reengineering. That is the first phase. Both Going and Emerson discussed the first phase and importance.
 

Job Plan for Value Engineering

Phase 1. Orientation: Understand the customers’ needs and wants. Understand the functions performed by the product and the contribution of each part and each feature of the part and the complete product to the functions to be performed by the product.

Value engineer has to make sure that he does not diminish the contribution of the product to the customers' needs and wants.

Phase 2. Information: Collection of information on quantities, vendors, drawings, materials, manufacturing methods, and costs.


Phase 3. Speculation: Using all the techniques of value analysis to come out with alternative low cost materials and methods to produce components and the product. Creativity is to be employed here. Value engineer has to involve experts from various disciplines to help with ideas.

Blast, create and refine are the steps used in this step.

Blast
For each function to be performed by a product or a component, find alternative products, materials or processes that serve the function to a great extent but at a less cost. These alternative ideas do not satisfy the specified or required function completely but they do to a significant extent. Identify they function they perform and the cost involved,



Create

In create phase, the technique of "Use real creativity" needs to be employed to come out with ways by which the low cost alternatives identified during the blast stage can be modified to accomplish the specified function to a much greater extent with pertinent increase in cost. During this stage also the improvement in function and the increase in cost are to be clearly identified.

Refine

In this step, much more creativity is used and also the techniques "Use industry experts to extend specialized knowledge" and  "Utilize and pay for vendors’ skills and knowledge" are used to refine the ideas developed during the create step to come out with a refined alternative that fully accomplishes the specified function at a lower cost. During refine step, some more functionality is added as well as some additional cost.

Phase 4. Analysis:  Technical and cost analysis of the alternative proposed. Identifing  and overcoming roadblocks is important here.

Phase 5. Program planning: Approach the specialists to further refine the selected alternatives. Inform the specialists the accepted suggestions and give mandate to them to take steps to implement the suggestions.

Phase 6. Program execution: Pursue regularly the specialists and vendors to get their inputs on various tasks assigned to them. The output of this phase is a detailed design, successful trail  pilot  run of a manufacturing process or  a confirmed estimate from a vendor for supplying a component, material or sub assembly.

Phase 7. Status summary and conclusion. The results of the value engineering study are to be presented to decision makers. The reports needs to have a summary sheet as well as the full supporting documentation.  The value engineering project is concluded when the product is manufactured and distributed at the lowered cost as per the value engineering study.

Special Knowledge Required


In practically all fields, the operator used special tools and special or field specific knowledge. Value analysis and engineering is no exception.

Reach of knowledge: For value analysis, the knowledge required is extremely broad.
Nature of knowledge: Information on materials, processes,  and functional products.
Form and Constitution of Knowledge Fund: Handbooks, catalogues, charts, price lists, product and process descriptions, tables etc.
Listing of specialized Competence: Value analysis requires consulting specialists and specialized sources. So a list of consultants as well as special publication is required for various materials, processes and components.


The specialized knowledge required in value improvement work consists of information on materials, processes, functional products, sources of functional knowledge, approaches to function performance, and practical ideas for economical function performance.

It is important that the value engineer’s library of special knowledge contains a comprehensive volume of trade knowledge backed by efficient means for a quick recall of needed information. Value engineer also needs well-organized references to a maximum number of persons of special skills that may be consulted in connection with each problem.

Value engineers need develop a database having the association between properties of materials and costs apart from material and its cost. Similarly a database that shows the relationship between the properties of products produced by various processes and the cost of each process, including the material used is also valuable.


This topic will be discussed in more detail in a separate article 'Knowledge Required for Value Engineering'.
   

Qualifications and Training for Value Analysts and Engineers


Qualifications: Logic, creativity, ability to make rapid searches, recall, ability to quickly sort out useful information,  synthesis of solutions, selection of promising alternatives.

Knowledge: Understanding of the properties of materials, and of manufacturing processes, their potentialities, and their limitations.

Traits required: Imagination, initiative, self-organization, cooperative attitude,
Attitude: belief in the importance of value

Training: Three weeks class room followed by six months of practical work.
Another round of three weeks class room followed six months of practical work
Another round of three weeks.
 

In addition to the job plan based on function definition and function based alternatives finding, Miles gave 13 additional techniques. Some of these techniques part of process industrial engineering already in use in Miles time.


Value Analysis Techniques


  1. Avoid generalities
  2. Get all available costs
  3. Use information from the best source
  4. Blast create and refine
  5. Use real creativity
  6. Identify and overcome roadblocks
  7. Use industry experts to extend specialized knowledge
  8. Get a dollar sign on key tolerances
  9. Utilize vendors’ available functional products
  10. Utilize and pay for vendors’ skills and knowledge
  11. Utilize specialty processes
  12. Utilize applicable standards
  13. Use the criterion, “would I spend my money this way?”

Value Analysis Techniques - Video Presentations
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Play List - All 13 Value Analysis Techniques
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHH-QZ29EOo&list=PL6W3qaSriFEgzI80uqu4ygW5jJsDCCyJf
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More detailed description of techniques



For further study:

First article by L.D. Miles in 1949  http://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/3948 download the file 35.5 pdf from this page.
 

Lawrence D. Miles, Techniques of Value Analysis and Engineering, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York 1961.





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Value Engineering is a Subject in the following IE Programmes

EM 627  University of New Haven
http://catalog.newhaven.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=3&poid=332

IE 6220 Wayne State University
https://engineering.wayne.edu/ise/syllabi.php


Updated 27.7.2023, 7 July 2021
Pub 23 June 2020

2 comments:

  1. Excellent Product Design draws in more clients thus giving an organisation a bush above various other rivals out there. 2. It is additionally vital due to the fact that it brings together 3 essential issues, the concept, the package and the process. ... Good item style is necessary in replacing out-of-date designs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Read on 7.7.2022 as per IE Online Course Schedule.

    ReplyDelete