What It Means For You

Thanks to the efficiency, thoroughness and rigor of our Value Engineering Process, we can deliver not just your product, but also significant time-to-market and cost-savings.

Our Value Engineering Process creates a unique methodology, based on military procedure (MIL-STD-490A, specifically), that ensures a smooth, efficient and fast process to reduce your product’s time-to-market. Less time wasted, fewer problems encountered & a more efficient methodology also add up to more cost savings for you.

Did you know that 60 to 70% of engineering projects fail because of issues relating to process: the inability to coordinate different teams or reconcile different business interests or respond effectively to unforeseen technical difficulties? Without an adequate process in place to respond to unexpected difficulties and miscommunications, projects can get lost, sidetracked, stalled or – worst of all – simply fail to meet the necessary requirements.

Enter our Value Engineering Process.

Scope & Requirements Analysis

A successful product or system demands a clear understanding of the end-user's requirements for the product. The product has to be able to do exactly what the end-user needs it to do.

Therefore, the first step is to analyze user requirements. We take 10% to 15% of the total project time to determine what we can do with the budget and time allocated. We examine the functional requirements of the product and how to meet those requirements.

We also address the inherent tension between marketing & sales, business management, product support, and engineering staffs during product development. We create an Integrated Product Team with one point person representing each interest. We meet frequently during this phase, if only by phone, to make sure everyone's concerns and needs are aired, answered and satisfactorily integrated into consideration.

The requirements analysis allows us to create detailed product specs which will guide the next steps in the Value Engineering Process.

Establish "user-based requirements." How will the end-users use the product or system, and what results do they expect from it?
Develop the system architecture to satisfy those requirements.
Allocate the user-based requirements into different configuration items – that is, separate components of the system that come together at the end to create the final product – to be developed. We determine what components have to be developed versus what can be bought off-the-shelf versus what we can use out of our own Engineering Design Library.
Those functonal pieces are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. We can develop plans to design and develop each piece, test them, then integrate the pieces together for optimal design.
Develop the Product Functional Specification, along with specs for each configuration item to be developed.
Implement a Product Development and Quality Assurance Plan, followed by a Test and Verification Plan.

These plans must consider how to allocate those resources to ensure different components are completed in an appropriate order. For example, if Component B is dependent on Component A, it can’t be tested until A is complete. To maximize efficiency, we dedicate resources such that A and B are finished simultaneously, or A first. Alternatively, we may determine we can use a component out of our Engineering Design Library as a stop-gap measure to begin testing Component B.

Now imagine we have dozens or more components, as well as multiple teams of experts working in different cities. Understanding requirements and allocating resources to develop the configuration items drastically reduce development times as well as potential errors, technical glitches and miscommunications.

This is a major reason why our VEP creates cost- and time-savings. It's why we call it the Value Engineering Process.

Design & Implementation

In the next phase, we put the product specs into action to develop and test each configuration item. Each item is designed and built according to the specifications established in the initial phase. With a clear understanding of the end requirements, the design and development process flows smoother and easier.

Integration & Testing

After the configuration items, or discrete components, have been built and tested separately, we then integrate them into a holistic system and ensure they work together harmoniously. Because we already have a requirements-based plan for integration and testing - the Test Plan developed in the initial phase - this phase is also time- and cost-efficient. Like the initial phase, integration and testing may consume 15 to 20% of the total project time.

Delivery

All of this leads up to the final moment: delivery of your product or system, ready for your own use, or to market to your customers.

The Cyber Group Advantage

The Value Engineering Process