Value Engineering: Everything of value is defenseless

UPDATE:  on 31 aug. it is made officially that I as a Value Engineer will facilitate the 3 chosen innovations that are the result of the FMM Innovation Event. June 2012 where I was one of the 3 host speakers. I am trilled and honored! We are going to work in 3 groups of participants to power up the innovative ideas and see how we can Kick-Start them. Reading this Blog gives You an idea how that will work.

All around us we feel the urge to respond to what we call The Crisis.

In Holland it’s election time and every politic party tries to draw attention of possible voters by exposing their exclusive solutions that will solve our problems. Unfortunately they all use the old fashioned way of rebelling against other parties instead of trying to listen and understand the motives of others and why they thing they are right.

This is characteristic for the way our world has come to operate. We all have to expose ourselves. We need to be different and we show that by accentuating the errors of others. We behave as individuals but at the same time we are afraid to be laughed, we need to look good for our Peers and we need to be connected with the group we see as part of our Brand.

These kind of emotions and counterproductive behaviour stand in our way if we really want to create a better world. As everything is connected with everything, not only in nature but also in society, we have to face the complex situation we are in and no one of us can do that on his one. Nor can politic parties, companies or governments. We have to join forces, connect our energy, knowledge and networks.

Students practicing Value Engineering

Only, if we put a group of people together to achieve something, this does not necessarily work out too well. We call that a meeting, a chairman takes his role, shy people try to hide themselves, extroverts take all the time, craftsman and experts get bored and at the end all Ego’s are angry and frustrated because they did not get what they think they earn. So we need something else.

That something is Value Engineering. Knowing we need diversity in groups to get a wide view of a problem and being able to create innovative solutions, more than 65 years ago a man called Larry Miles, a buyer at General Electric, discovered that instead of asking for rubber he should ask for a seal solution. By given room to providers to come with smarter offers, combined with other materials and possibilities he got more value for his money. He called it demanding for Functions instead of products .

Later on a man called “By The Way” (No lie! I have met him personally two years ago, he was 91 years old and very much alive and kicking!) added a technique he saw his grandchildren do automatically. Asking WHY and HOW stimulates one to think about deeper lying motives and functions behind the functions. Once you know WHY something is wanted you can think of a proper HOW you want to accomplish that. Every answer is written down as a new function. These Why and HOW answers = functions fit together as beads on a string. Every answer = function to the left goes deeper into the WHY and the same answers = functions read to the right are answers to the HOW question.

Sounds difficult? It’s not! It’s so simple, almost childish. Only, as soon as we try to figure out complex situations we can find and describe so many Functions that putting them all together into a clear structure of HOW and WHY makes it complicated. A function structure whit all the relevant functions put together in a logic How and Why manner is called a FAST (Function Analysis System Technique) but putting a FAST together takes a little while.

Actually working on a Function Analysis is what we in Holland should call a way of SLOW MANAGEMENT. We take time to get to know each other’s motives, We really need to understand the way other members of the Value Engineering team think and WHY they want something. The good thing about that is that a team grows to understand each other and even better, this creates Trust!!

Value Engineering; Erasing barriers, steer together

So what happens is that a multidisciplinary group of people, consisting of Stakeholders as in Users, Experts, Owners, Investors, Architects, Engineers (depending on the issue at stake), start working together creating a Function Analysis and at the same time they develop Trust, they accomplice real connection and all their Craftmanship and Knowledge gets on the table and ordered in an transparent and open structure. This is the perfect start of a team that has to achieve great things. And which team does not these day!

And it is not over by that! The next step is the Creative Phase in where the same team brainstorms over the functions that are most probable to make a huge difference, as they can be done in a different and better way.

The best and most valuable ideas get filtered and little teams work them out to complete innovations, with the do’s and don’ts, the issues being solved, the risks that are involved and so on.

Getting to the core of problems, products, projects of programmes helps to find better solutions. It makes it obvious to the partners / stakeholders that they are in it together and that they have to really co-create to achieve the ultimate goal and a suitable level of effectiveness and creativity, as synergy does not fall from the sky but as to be earned by listening, connecting and sharing.

Exactly this is what is missing in most projects and teams. They think 1 and 1 is 2. They never discover the true effect of synergy and that 1 and 1 can also be 27. And to get along with the scarcity around us we need to make every 1 into a 27 and in a way that after the 27 is used it can be up-cycled or at least recycled to another 28 or more.

We have a scarcity on money (most of us anyway) on raw materials, on (non-renewable) energy, large parts of the world on clean water. And we think we have a scarcity in time and even more in attention. We lack creativity, we fight over patent rights and we make bigger contracts to try to be safe. Instead of fighting and thinking that everything we value gets so expensive and rare that we have to try to control everything even more, we have to get rid of this dumb way of looking at things and the world. As soon as we start sharing our thoughts, ideas and maybe even our things, there is no more scarcity and we can experience great, beautiful and rich things without exploiting anything or anyone anymore.

Such high goals and such a simple tool as Value Engineering isn’t that way out of proportion? I think not. Of course  there are other techniques to co-create and work together, but I know of nothing so simple that can move obstacles as mountains this easy.

In America and Great Britain they know this. Value Engineering is officially required in governmental projects to be sure money is well spend. In Korea car manufacturers use it to improve designs of cars and car parts. In Holland it starts to get noticed, but so far only in technical companies to safe money in building or manufacturing areas. 

I want to use its impact in the human area. To reinforce projects that are stumbling, to invent totally new solutions, to shorten turnarounds, to simplify governmental processes or to invent and implement New Ways of Working in a participatory way.

To diffuse Value Engineering into the organisations that could benefit from VE (and all companies and projects do!) I initiate Masterclasses Value Engineering, I use it in guest lectures at Applied Science Universities and offer myself as a Value Engineering facilitator in situations that ask for innovation.

If you know situations that I can be of assistance please let me know!

Do you have experiences with Value Engineering please respond and let’s share that with my readers.

Want to know more about it? Check my site with introduction movie (in Dutch). Klick here.

Or download the PDF with the English version on my English page which will soon be available. 

If you are really interested get in touch and I will share a PowerPoint with you that I use in my classes!

And if you want to join one of the Masterclasses Value Engineering check my site and sign up!