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Value engineering Definition and Concept
Concept
The concept evolved from the work of Lawrence Miles who, in the 1940's was a purchase engineer with the General Electric Company (G. E. C). At that time, manufacturing industry in the United States was running at a maximum capacity to supply the allies with arms. There were shortages in steel, copper, bronze, nickel, bearings electrical resistors, and many other materials and components. G. E. C wished to expand its production of turbo supercharger for B24 bombers from 50 to 1000 per week.
Miles was assigned the task of purchasing the materials to permit this. Often he was unable to obtain the specific material or component specified by the designer, so Miles reasoned, "if I can not obtain the product, I must obtain an alternative which performs the same function". Where alternatives were found they were tested and approved by the designer.
Miles observed that many of the substitutes were providing equal or better performance at a lower cost and from this evolved the first definition of value engineering.
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