Related Tools And Techniques Of Value Analysis

Target Pricing \ Costing

This is a practice which uses a known market price (a price that the market will tolerate) as the starting point for the review of products to eliminate waste and costs as a means of generating a margin for the product. This process provides a good objective for product designs and increases the ‘price’ attractiveness of the product in the market. It is therefore a good means of focusing the design process.

Product Variety Funnel

This is a diagram that shows, for each stage of manufacture and conversion, the number of products that result from a single input (in the form of a line chart). For example, a car company may start with a basic hatchback vehicle, once it is painted there may be 14 different types of this vehicle, then one of three engines can be added (expanding the funnel by a factor of three) and so on throughout the production process. As such, it is common to find that many car companies actually offer 90,000 different variants of the one input. This diagram provides valuable insights into the ability to configure vehicles to order and  indicates the point at which the funnel expands rapidly. Anything to the right of this point indicates that the product is specific and to the left it is relatively flexible to be used in a number of final products. This technique has obvious links to customisation, platforms and time compression methods.

Cause and Effect Analysis

A tool for analyzing process dispersion. It is also referred to as the Ishikawa diagram and the fishbone diagram. The diagram illustrates the main causes and sub-causes leading to an effect (symptom). The cause-and-effect diagram is one of the seven tools of quality. This technique is often termed the ‘fishbone’ diagram as the chart resembles a form of skeleton. This is a great way of collecting information regarding failures of a product in the manufacturing process by segregating failures into distinct themes such as materials, methods, people, and such like.

Check Sheets
A simple data-recording device. The check sheet is designed by the user, which facilitates the user’s interpretation of the results. The check sheet is one of the seven tools of quality, and should not be confused with data sheets or checklists. The person conducting the analysis therefore monitors and records each time a failure is detected. The number of failures is often converted into a bar chart to show the amount of failures by the source of the failure. Also, it is common to then convert the bar chart into a pareto chart (an 80:20) chart that shows the most important sources of failure. The rule of thumb applied to pareto analysis is that 80% of the frequency of failure can be traced to only 20% of the sources of failure. Therefore targeting the 20% of sources will bring immediate and effective results for the redesign of the product.

Tree Diagram (FAST)

A tree diagram is a tool to systematically decompose customer requirements or other goals into a logic heirarchy. In the case of VA, the starting point could be the customer requirements for value. From this box a series of arrows would extend to all the different functions that create value for the customer and then each one of these would be broken into sub-elements as the chart is drawn. The chart is therefore a carefully layered series of relationships. The chart is very useful when analysing complex situations such as under VA conditions, it constantly refines and specifies what is needed at each level or tier of analysis to achieve the starting point goal. The technique also reduces the time required when conducting analyses. On completion, the chart represents the entire list of variables that need to be analysed by the team. The technique is also known as FAST for VA purposes and this acronym stands for Functional Analysis Systems Technique.

Computer Aided Design (CAD)

This process involves the use of computer generated designs for flexibility during the product design stage. It allows the designer to make, test and revise drawings before they are released to the manufacturing department. The use of computer based designs also allows the process to evolve into computer aided manufacturing (direct computer to machine manufacturing), rapid prototyping via disk or downloaded information and the ability to export data (and drawings to suppliers).