Value engineering for managing the design process

A number of techniques have been investigated (labelling and grouping, categorisation and importance level) to establish usable metrics for the quality management of the design process. The use of importance levels seemed to be the most effective method used with an adaptation of the value engineering technique but with the emphasis on worth rather than value (value being worth over cost). A partial validation of this technique has shown it to be useful in identifying the critical issues so that non‐value‐added processes can be eliminated.