Frugal Reengineering

Frugal Reengineering - Definition

Frugal Reengineering is a structured, sustainable process of continually redesigning products to cut costs. Cost-effective continual re-engineering (or continuous improvement in manufacturing parlance) of a product is the essence of frugal re-engineering.

Frugal re-engineering builds on the concepts of value analysis and engineering.
Frugal re-engineering has the potential to drive year-on-year cost savings of between 7 and 12 percent.

Knowledge Base and Knowledge Management for Frugal Reengineering

Are substitute low cost materials available?

Commodity prices are always rising and but low cost substitutes are being invented and developed.  The low cost substitutes material properties are also being further developed. Recently, an Indian automaker that projected the rising cost of nickel generated significant savings by substituting components that contained nickel with non-nickel-based components. Another firm cut costs by 5 percent and weight by 10 percent by judiciously substituting composite materials, which are less expensive than steel for low-volume applications.

Have manufacturing advances occurred offering low cost substitute processes?

Manufacturing technology and process innovations offer further opportunities to cut costs by reducing input material requirements. New process technologies such as near-net forging and flow forming—technologies with implications in many discrete manufacturing companies—can dramatically cut costs.

Have design engineering advances occurred providing opportunities for low cost designs?

The company must develop a knowledge management system that is able to create a database of relevant development in the external environment and ideas generated by internal members in this regard and make them available for the team doing a frugal reengineering project on a product, sub-assembly or component.

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