Value Engineering

Value engineering is a systematic analysis of the functions of the components and materials making up a product, aimed at lowering its cost while accepting only a tolerable loss of performance or functionality, built on the idea that value is the ratio of function to cost and so can be improved either by raising function or by lowering cost, provided the basic functions of the product are preserved rather than reduced in the process. Manufacturers apply it, for instance, when a product is expected to become practically or stylistically obsolete within a known span of time: rather than building it from higher-grade components that would outlast that span, value engineering favors the least expensive components that still meet the projected lifetime of the product, since higher-grade components would impose an unnecessary cost on both manufacturer and buyer. Because it is so often applied to products with deliberately short lifespans, however, value engineering has also become associated in public discussion with planned obsolescence and a decline in product durability, a linkage critics such as Vance Packard have argued gave engineering as a whole an undeserved reputation for directing its energies toward short-term market ends rather than lasting quality.