The integration of Value Engineering with Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is a powerful combination which many manufacturing organizations are using today to ensure the best value proposition is offered to the customer. In fact the leading company producing DFMA software, Boothroyd and Dewhurst Incorporated, has just recently released a new version of their software which allows the user to classify all of the components in a bill of material (BOM) for a product into functions for easy identification and sorting. Value Engineering ensures that the right product to meet the customer needs is offered at the lowest possible cost with the performance or function that the customer demands. It starts with understanding what your customer requirements are, knowing how to develop those requirements into function terms, assigning costs to those functions, and then ensuring that the product which is designed meets those customer requirements at the cost they are willing to pay for those required functions over the life cycle of the product. Sounds easy, but without Value Engineering techniques to help manufacturing companies with this process, many organizations fail to deliver the right products to the customer.
After you are sure you know what the customer wants and have an initial concept in mind, DFMA helps manufacturing organizations optimize the design with respect to manufacturing capabilities to ensure that the customer is obtaining a product which truly brings them the best value. Delivering only those functions that the customer wants and minimizing those functions which the customer doesn’t care about, or is not willing to pay for.
This presentation features Road Safety Analysis tools, techniques and benefits that can be applied and integrated into VE studies based on a pilot study at Caltrans and on the Ontario Ministry of Transportation Value Engineering Program’s experience including: