1) VA for Existing Products
One of the best approaches to VA is simply to select an existing product that is sold in relatively large volumes. This product, or product family, will tend to have a great deal of the basic information, and documented history, which can be used quickly as opposed to a newly introduced product where such a history is not available. An existing product unites all the different managers in a business, each with an opinion and list of complaints concerning the ability to convert the design into a ‗saleable‘ product.
2) VA for New Products – Value Engineering
For new products, the team will need to modify the VA approach and will operate in an environment that is less certain and has poor levels of available information upon which to make decisions. In this case, the analysis and systematic process of review for new products is known as Value Engineering (VE). The VE approach is similar to that of Value Analysis but requires a much greater level of investment by the organization in terms of the skilled, experienced and proficient human resources seconded to the group. For more detailed information on Value Engineering as opposed to Value Analysis please refer to the references listed at the end of this report.
3) Value Analysis for Product Families- Horizontal Deployment
The final form of VA is results when there is scope for the ‗horizontal deployment‘ of the results of a VA exercise with a single product or family of products. Under conditions where the value analysis project team finds commonalties with many products manufactured by the company, then it is possible to extend the benefits to all these other products concurrently. In this manner, all affected products can be changed quickly to bring major commercial benefits and to introduce the improvement on a ‗factory-wide basis‘. This is particularly the case when supplying companies offer improvements that affect all the products to which their materials or parts are used. The horizontal deployment activity has many advantages both in terms of financial savings and also the relatively short amount of time required to introduce the required changes to the product design.
