When innovation outpaces availability

Across many industries, the shortage of skilled workers has become an invisible weak link, one that is quietly undermining product performance, customer satisfaction and even safety. Manufacturers may be pushing technological boundaries, but innovation alone is not enough when there are too few qualified hands to properly build and install increasingly sophisticated systems. For customers, the impact is immediate and frustrating: long waits for installation, reduced access to certain products and, in some cases, systems that fail not because of poor design, but because they were installed incorrectly.

Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the construction sector. Areas such as gate hardware, ventilation and electrical systems demand deep technical knowledge, rigorous training and years of practical experience. Take ventilation systems as an example. Incorrect drainage can cause unpleasant odors and inefficient pipe layouts with excessive bends will generate more noise and reduce efficiency. Inevitably, this will not only damage system performance but also the product’s and brand’s reputations.

Solutions in mechanical design

In response to this shortage, companies are rethinking mechanical design to ensure performance, safety and protect brand reputation. Mechanical products should be more straightforward so they are easier to build and more intuitive to install so that even less-experienced installers can achieve correct results without compromising quality. The principle is simple: assume that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and design systems to minimize the risks. 

This approach builds on the broader trend of user-centered design. Extensive testing is at the core of this, with tools like failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to anticipate risks and prioritize fixes, and poka-yoke and design-for-assembly techniques to ensure components fit together only in the correct way or even better, when it doesn’t matter how they’re installed. The changes can range from complete redesigns to simple nudges, such as clear visual cues, color coding and physical guides.

Of course, redesigning product lines and making products installer-friendly isn’t free. Designers and engineers constantly juggle simplicity with performance, durability and cost, and offer the company the insights needed to make the right decisions through precise data, rigorous testing and past experience. This is crucial because each decision also sends a message about the brand. Over time, documenting lessons learned helps keep that knowledge alive, so new products continue to improve in line with the current climate.

The ripple effect of installer-friendly design

Making products easier to build and install doesn’t just help manufacturers and installers, it benefits everyone along the chain. For customers, it often means shorter wait times and fewer product failures, improving both satisfaction and trust. Design strategies like modular or prefabricated systems make selection, sales and installation easier, allowing for customization without complicating the process. On the other hand, approaches such as design-for-disassembly boost repairability, Bosch, Makita and Fairphone being prime examples.

Simplifying installations also frees highly skilled personnel to focus on complex tasks, whether specialized repairs or intricate system setups. In some cases, straightforward setups can be handled by end users themselves, such as Telenet’s Wi-Fi kits or Renson’s ventilation setup packaging templates.

A third redesign benefit is in standardizing product lines, which reduces the time and effort needed to train installers. Locinox locks, for instance, all follow the same drilling patterns and steps, while apps and digital guides replace bulky manuals, providing accessible instructions for both installers and users. These improvements not only make life easier for professionals but also enhance the end customer’s experience, a win-win across the board.

The future is modular, flexible and user-centered

The shortage of skilled installers isn’t going away anytime soon, and technology isn’t slowing down either. That means companies will need to keep designing with ease of manufacturing, installation, modularity and personalization in mind. While prefab and simplified systems may make manufacturing and installation easier, customers still want to be able to customize and personalize according to their needs and preferences. Modular approaches will have to ensure people can mix and match, just as in the car industry, where ‘blocks’ of features give users more freedom. In this context, young designers and external consultants can also bring fresh eyes and new ideas to challenge old habits. In the end, thinking about manufacturers, installers and users isn’t just practical, it’s becoming a key way to stay competitive, flexible and trusted in a fast-changing world.

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As products grow more complex, the pressure on mechanical engineers to get designs right the first time has never been higher. Every decision you make can cascade throughout the entire system, just like other teams’ choices can change your design, impacting overall performance, manufacturability and cost.

This expert session is tailored for product designers and mechanical engineers, showing you how to think from a system-level perspective in your own designs and make smarter design decisions. Over the years, we’ve supported engineering teams in accelerating innovation by applying new ways of thinking and tackling problems head-on.

This session brings those insights from Karl Wyseur, On-site Mechanical Engineer at Verhaert Consulting, and Samuel Van den Driessche, Mechanical System Engineer at Verhaert Product Innovation, directly to you. Access the presentation and summary below to learn how!

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Complete elimination of ultrafine particles is virtually impossible yet reducing the sources and individual exposure to ultrafine particles within tolerances is the best way to ensure healthy living.
Creating a healthy workplace is critical for cities and mainly for airports to keep operating. Awareness on the topic of ultrafine particles is rising and receives special attention from stakeholders like employees, unions, employers, media, insurance companies, and politics. Providing a healthy work environment is in that respect essential. Yet all sources of ultrafine particles are not identified yet. Where, when, and how much are employees exposed to ultrafine particles is mostly unknown. To start innovating an important question is which (economic) actors have the reason, motivation, and ability to change the existing solutions of ultrafine particles generation and processes where exposure is high? Which (economic) actors are blocking the current adoption of new solutions?

Innovation for effective measures

People working at for example airports face severe health risks. High concentrations of ultrafine particles in combination with long-term exposure cause cardiovascular diseases and have been shown to cause pulmonary inflammation due to the retention in the lungs. Although the effects are highly unknown, research has proved that ultrafine particles translocate to all organs. Long and heavy exposure induces cough, worsens asthma, and is also linked to diabetes and even cancer. The longer people are exposed and the heavier the exposure, the higher the health risk. Research indicates that especially the bay areas and the platforms are subject to high concentrations of ultrafine particles.
We realize that it is hard to imagine for the average worker what the health risks of ultrafine particles are. Ultrafine particles are invisible, and we can’t smell it (yet). Awareness and behavior are critical success factors elements. The behavior of people who work on the airside has a major influence on the exposure to ultrafine particles. Experience has shown that the workforce working on the platform is difficult to mobilize. Think of the limited use of lifting aids in the baggage halls. Explicit attention to behavioral change is mission-critical.

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Building a strong capacity to innovate

Founded in 2009, The Engineering Network has built a strong expertise in design and engineering consultancy, both on-site and in-house. Thanks to the shared focus on human-centered design, innovative solutions and customer-specific needs, the services from TEN agency, elva and Verhaert will fit seamlessly and strengthen their ability to boost customers’ capacity to innovate.

This partnership marks the next step in Verhaert’s solid growth story. It not only stimulates its market leadership in on-site product development consultancy, it will also guarantee agile and complete solutions in the future.

The future of on-site consultancy

Elva and Verhaert’s sub brand Moebius Consulting both believe that the strength of consultancy is their employees. Professional and personal growth, as well as knowledge sharing is crucial to the companies’ success. Under the new unifying brand Verhaert On-site Consulting, they will help meet the growing demand for experienced temporary technical profiles. Together, they will help customers build and scale up innovation teams faster and with the right capabilities to address specific challenges and opportunities.

“Project-based on-site consultancy is becoming more and more important within innovation. We’re already experiencing this right now in the rising demand and structural shortages of talent on the market. Verhaert On-site Consulting will be able to provide more complete support from product and digital consultants over a larger geographical reach to our customers”, continues Dirk Van Maele, Director Verhaert On-site Consulting.

Multi-disciplinary teams to drive growth

To Verhaert, growth means seizing opportunities. Combining the competences from both companies in innovation management, user-centered design and technology will accelerate its mission to boost the capacity to innovate of its customers. TEN’s design, engineering and project management teams will gradually integrate into the product and strategic innovation teams from Verhaert. This will increase their multi-disciplinarity to enable the right team set-up for any project challenge at hand.

“The need to explore solid cross-industry trends and strategies is higher than ever. By combining our teams, we can both strengthen our current services, provide a wider array of available expertise, as well as answer our customer’s new challenges, like sustainability, talent shortages, autonomous production and smarter products. It’s the perfect match to accelerate our ambitious growth strategy and capacity to innovate”, adds Koen Verhaert, CEO at Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

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Where are the limits? Can it be done for every device? What are the possibilities for high-current battery-powered handheld devices like hair dryers or power tools. It seems so evident, however, a wireless hair dryer of 1600 Watt isn’t on the market yet, so can it become cordless?

Complexity of developing cordless battery-powered devices

After some research, we found a Chinese 1.250 Watt hair dryer. When looking closely, the battery is only for controlling the fan. If you want to heat the air, you need to plug it in. We also discovered a 300 Watt cordless hair dryer, however it showed to have a short battery autonomy and lifetime. 300 Watt isn’t that much.

A recently truly cordless 500 Watt hair dryer showed to be too bulky and heavy to become a commercial success. Let’s consider what needs to be done to generate a best in class 500 Watt cordless device?

Why? Well, there are many advantages to cordless hair dryers for users, mainly of course the added freedom during the use. However, developing a 500 Watt cordless device is complex and there are some disadvantages that need to be solved. To give some examples, there are less heaters that can work on low voltage, thicker cables are needed, the center of gravity needs to be optimized due to the perceived added weight of the batteries.

Key aspects to consider when developing batteries for these kind devices are obviously:

• Swappable vs rechargeable options
• Safety
• Energy density (capacity inside)
• Power density, highest discharge rate
• Shelf life (retain capacity)
• Operational life
• Thickness
• Temperature range
• Battery life cycle

All of this will determine the type of battery. The figure below illustrates different options of the type of batteries in function of energy density versus volume. On the chart you can see that Li-ion batteries have the highest density, which is exactly what we need. Also, shelf life is better than most others.

Download the perspective to continue reading on how the battery pack configuration for Li-ion batteries looks like.

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We’re finally seeing momentum in the market to focus on the ecological side of products. Which engineering decisions have to be made and which options are available when designing green(er) products? In this webinar, Laurent Houtsaeger, Coordinator MechLab at Verhaert, explains how to approach sustainable product design practically. Because if you didn’t start yet, it’s time to get in front of the curve as new legislation will be coming soon.

Watch the recording

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Bicycle locker of the future

Therefore new needs and demands arise in relation to our daily transport. As a user you want to be informed about the presence of your bike, how much is your bike already charged, is the access to your bike still closed … You may also want to receive a warning on your smartphone in case of a suspicious event (gate open, bike moves …) so you can act immediately.

These changed requirements mean that a bicycle locker has to be more than just a mechanical construction. A bike locker must therefore evolve into an intelligent, integrated solution where mechanical, electronic and software components are connected in a seamless way. The bike parking of the future no longer stands alone, but is connected to its users and managers, is aware of its environment and automatically responds to it (access control, security, status reports, recommendations, …). That way, the bicycle parking facility not only fulfills a utility function, but becomes an intelligent and personalized service as well.

Manufacturers of bicycle parkings face a huge challenge here. At the same time, the technical upgrading of the bicycle storage is a great opportunity to create added value as a manufacturer and thus have a strong competitive advantage over previously low-cost solutions from low-wage countries. Not only in the field of architecture, but also in the field of the earnings model, new opportunities arise. Consider, for example, offering ‘bicycle storage as a service’ via a subscription model.

System structure intelligent bicycle locker © VERHAERT

8 attention points of a bicycle locker

So we can clearly identify 2 trends for access hardware:

• Mechanical locks are being replaced by electronically controlled versions.
• The introduction of connectivity and apps in simple applications to make them more intelligent.

As both challenges require different competences than traditionally necessary in the sector, it becomes a greater challenge to develop new products that are ready for the needs of tomorrow and to be able to overcome these technical and non-technical challenges.

Download the perspective to continue reading on the 8 (non-)technical challenges and the partners to get the technological know-how in order to bring this story to a successful end.

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Value engineering starts early

Tolerances are often taken into account during the detailed design phase. This can force the mechanical designer to put in a lot of strict tolerances where they aren’t necessary. E.g. when there are too many separate parts in the tolerance chain, the wrong system components or production techniques are selected. So how should you do it?

When developing precise systems, thinking about tolerance in the detailed design phase is too late if you want to have an impact on final cost and manufacturability of a system. The big clue is to start with the full system architecture. Get to know the full system and all its limitations early in the project. What are the links between subsystems? What are the allowable tolerances of each subsystem? Once this is mapped, you can distribute the tolerances over the entire chain. Then you can do a feasibility check of all subsystems, by adding the interfaces and the standard tolerances of the predicted production technique. Next, check if these production techniques are still in line with the product and development target cost.

A basic principle of value engineering is to spread your tolerances in the chain to the most cost effectively manufactured parts or sub-systems.

Microfluidic systems are often defined by miniaturization and high mechanical tolerance specifications. A lot of read out devices for microfluidic cartridges are optical. Due to expensive wafer production, chip size matters to reduce cost. If the biological or chemical processes on this chip need to be analyzed using an optical system, this miniaturizing of the chip with its micro channels will implicate the need for higher precision and more expensive optics in the read out unit or device. Hence the positioning of the cartridge will get more critical too. Is the cost of the chip more important than the cost of the device?

In this type of developments it’s important to understand your business model, to know how to spread the costs. If for instance, you know from the start that revenue will come from selling microfluidic cartridges and the devices will not add a lot to the revenue stream, you should push the costs linked to tolerances towards the device. An option could be to put complex automated alignment and focus in the read out device, keeping in mind that the cost of the device will go up exponentially. But here you can keep the chip cost as low as possible. Option two is to distribute the tolerances over the different subsystems (chip, interfaces/alignment, read out system). This way you might not need an expensive automated alignment in the device, but the wafer chip needs to be bigger to be able to get a proper alignment and focus.

Easy design gains for the designer

Designs often need updates and iterations or even product generations to get to the wanted result. But there are simple tips and tricks that could help any designer make well-thought-out designs from the start.

With precision molded parts there’s a simple reasoning that can help you to get more accuracy and reduce the cost of production. Here the job can be as simple as placing all functional features and interfaces on one side of the part. Accurate dimensions between features in one part of the mold are easier/cheaper than dimensions between 2 different mold parts. For example, the image below shows 2 features that need to be at a certain distance from one another. If the features are formed in opposite parts of the mold, there will need to be a reference to another position in the mold, adding an extra step in the tolerance chain (see image below). A solution is to put the features on the same side, like in the middle image. Obviously this is not always possible, however with this in mind, one can find ways to get features molded from the same side, like the center axes of the last image.

High tolerances don’t necessarily mean complex production techniques. Sheet metal can be the perfect choice to build robust and precise structures. When developing low quantity or intermediate precision devices, an old technique can be used to achieve relatively high accuracy. It’s known that 2D processing techniques, like laser/waterjet cutting or punching, have a high accuracy. With a groove and teeth principle it’s possible to make 3D structures that are precise and robust, even for large products.

The next image gives an example of such a structure. Here the device is a 695 x 370 x 460 mm automated lab instrument that needs accurate needle positioning over a big area.

Due to the groove and teeth principle in separate 2D metal plates, the assembly is straightforward. There’s no need for calibration or assembly tooling in production and all necessary tolerances are achieved. So reducing the number of parts isn’t always the better solution. Bending sheet metal parts to reduce the number of parts wouldn’t give the same accuracy and would cause more fall out. Welding is most probably not a viable alternative as it often leads to warpage. When going for larger production batches, the next step would be to go with deep drawn sheet metal by hard tooling as seen in products like computers or printers.

As a last point, a recurring flaw we see when reviewing designs is over-constrained or hyperstatic designs. These often result in unpredictable behavior of the system, depending on how the device is placed in the field e.g. uneven ground. Similarly, environmental conditions like temperature, moisture, vibrations … need to be taken into account in order to achieve precision in a wide operating range. Key is to fix structures in a way they can expand and shrink in a controlled manner.

It all comes to preliminary mapping and understanding your system. If the criticalities around precision are mapped, it’s manageable to de-risk or avoid criticalities in subsystems. And with the appropriate design tricks, you can build a robust and accurate system from the start.

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What is coffee anyway?

Coffee is universal, yet different everywhere you go. What I find interesting as an engineer is the way the same problem can be solved in different ways for different users.

This is relatively common in product development. It’s also one of its challenges. One of the tools to face this challenge is Value Engineering. The main formula of Value Engineering might seem a bit academic. Let’s try to clarify it a bit.

When developing a product, the first question is: “What does this product need to do?” Solving a problem often consists of different tasks, or functions. For example, coffee is always made in the same way:

• First, you need to pour hot water on ground coffee beans.
• Once the coffee aroma dissolved in the water, the ground coffee has to be separated again from the brew.
• Finally, you need to provide a convenient way to serve the coffee.
• Apart from this, the user wants to clean the material and maintain the footprint of the device acceptable. The whole solution cannot be excessively expensive either.

These actions are fairly simple and straightforward. Nevertheless, they are executed in distinct ways in different coffee devices. A function can often be met in different ways. The choice for or against an option is based on the benefit it brings to the user, compared to the its cost.

What’s important for the user? What price is he or she prepared to pay for this? The answer to these questions depends both on the individual user and the occasion and can be found through value engineering.

On one side, you have the electric coffee maker. It’s highly automatic: the user puts in cold water and ground coffee in a paper filter. The coffee maker heats up the water autonomously. The machine fills up the jug and even keeps it hot for the user. It is very suitable for people who prefer to drink large quantities of mild coffee over an extended period of time. An electric coffee maker is designed to be permanently installed in the kitchen. It comes with a distinctive noise.

The French press offers a different solution. The design assumes that it’s not that difficult for the user to provide some hot water. To filter the ground from the coffee, the user has to press down the filter manually. This is a small ritual that amateurs can appreciate. This solution is perfect for users who prefer smaller quantities of strong coffee to start their day. A French press has an elegant glass design. You can place it directly on the desert table. Once you had your coffee, the pot is quickly cleaned and stored back in the cupboard.

The mokapot ingeniously uses the steam pressure of the boiling water to percolate it through the coffee. The robust and compact design makes it suitable to use everywhere. It works as well on the electric cooking plate at home as on the camping ground coal fire. Because of its versatility it became an icon.

Finally, there’s instant coffee. It’s a very specific product. Since the whole product is soluble in water, no filter is needed. This makes the product extremely transportable, convenient and cheap.

There’s no doubt that this comes at the cost or reduced taste quality of the coffee. Instant coffee is one of those products that stand out by boldly sacrificing performance on some terrains to allow extreme performance on others.

It’s clear that coffee makers differentiate based on different emphases put on the aspects of design, convenience, coffee quality, device footprint, the coffee drinking experience and the portability of the device.

To understand how your product can be different from other solutions on the market, a benefit analysis graph such as below can be very useful.

Development of a successful product starts with understanding what’s valuable for the user

A successful product requires the team to find a solid combination of these options, with the intended user in mind. Just like for domestic coffee makers, you can see a clear distinction between commercial ones. If the whole office needs a coffee, but nobody has time to operate and clean the machine than the best coffee machine is a different device than the espresso machine in a breakfast bar. Nevertheless, both machines perform the same functions. The whole difference is in the details: price, design, labor cost, ease to clean the device, coffee volume and quantity and process speed.

Product development is not your history exam in high school. There’s (almost) always more than one answer.

The challenge of product development is to find the optimal combination of the options based on understanding the user, economical profitability and what’s technically feasible.

Understanding these 3 aspects is key in developing a successful product. This is a profoundly multidisciplinary undertaking. The team needs to understand the customer values in a product, and – as important – what’s not of added value to the user. By not integrating an electric heater, the French press or Moka pot can remain very simple, elegant and robust devices. This simplicity creates value for the user and reduces the technical complexity of the production process.

Based on this understanding, the project team can take solid decisions early in the project. Value engineering provides a systematic tool to perform this analysis. By obtaining these insights early in the project, time-consuming, difficult and expensive changes later in the project can be avoided. The cost of turing around a wrong decision increases spectacularly with time. Once a part has been integrated with the rest of the device, you cannot change it without interfering with the rest of the product.

It looks so simple

The interesting aspect of value engineering? How simple the result looks. In a well-designed product, everything comes together. A French press is not difficult to operate. There are no excess parts. It’s simple, reliable and robust.

A few years back, Verhaert Masters in Innovation developed a product for the French energy producer Engie. Consumers often lack the necessary insight in their own consumption pattern to efficiently decrease their energy consumption. To help the user, Engie asked Verhaert to develop a solution for monitoring the electrical consumption meter. Apart from the usual cost requirement, this task was complicated by a number of legal barriers. It was prohibited to alter anything to the existing meters. The additional device had to be installed on the outside of the casing. The device had to be installed by a technician working under time pressure. The device couldn’t block the periodical visual inspection by the client or billing inspector. These requirements meant that both the detection method and the attachment method of the device.

The Verhaert team developed a (patented) optical detection method that was sufficiently robust to allow the device to be installed manually, without needing to fine-tune the position afterwards. This detection method is sufficiently robust to function correctly for all the different types of meters in use. The attachment method was developed together with the detection method.

Once the technician has positioned the device with respect to the meter, he pushes in the studs to attach them to the casing. When the user wants to inspect the meter visually, he can remove the device from the studs for a moment. The correct positioning is guaranteed by snapping the device back over the studs.

Apart from its primary function – reading the meter – and the legal barriers, the product was designed specifically with the benefits for the users in mind. Both the installation technician as the energy consumer were not forgotten. This analysis gave a clear direction for engineering both the optical reading system and the attachment system.

Due to this clear direction in the engineering process, the solution looks extremely simple. This simplicity is a common characteristic of products that have been thought through early in the development. It avoids additional systems and components to allow functions that had not been considered in time.

Conclusion

What I hope you will remember from this. You don’t want to develop a medicine and start looking for a disease that fits it afterwards. The development of a product starts with making clear choices. By understanding your user and the use environment, you know what adds value and what doesn’t. This understanding guides you in deciding what functions to integrate in the product and how to evaluate the different options to implement these functions. If you fail to do this, you risk painting yourself in the corner.

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Do the trade-off

The key to value engineering: set clear product requirements. In the case of my beach pallets, durability wasn’t ranked very high in the product requirements, as for my use case it wasn’t valued anyway. Downgrading the durability opened the possibility for the use of lower quality materials, resulting in a significant cost advantage, which was highly valued in my case.

Only by having a good understanding about my needs and what I was willing to pay for it, they managed to design a product which was in line with my expectations, i.e. low cost and no need for durability.

Several tools exist to make a trade-off between added value for the consumer, production costs and price setting (competitive edge) and new technologies resulting in the final product requirements. The figure below is a summary of the different aspects that need to be taken in consideration when defining the final product requirements.

Not a cost down exercise only

The aim of value engineering is to design a product that will represent the optimum value to the manufacturer and customer.

Based on the beach tennis example, value engineering might be perceived as a pure cost down exercise. It’s not, it’s about the equation between value and cost. After a value engineering excursive, the outcome of the equation should go up.

Value engineering is therefore an interesting tool to design your products and thus a strategic tool for decision making.

The CEO’s mind: “Product sales is going down in a mature market, what should I do? Shall I focus on cost in order to get higher margins in order to compensate declining sales? Or should I focus on added value in order to boost sales (but with higher costs and lower margins)?”

Value engineering and strategic decisions

The perceived value of products go down over time, and therefore also the price people are willing to pay for it. Products that were innovative in the past, are the new normal today.

The next example shows that expectations from vacuum cleaners evolved over time, forcing companies to redesign and/or reinvent their products.

What we find interesting about the vacuum cleaners evolution is that established brands – due to new emerging technologies – are challenged and replaced by new brands. Hoover got challenged by Dyson’s bagless system, which is challenged today by new comers using sensor and AI technologies, of which the market leader is still undecided.

Over time, consumer needs and expectations evolved, as the Kano model above explained. This means that vacuum cleaners needed to reinvent themselves in order to match consumer needs. The value engineers of the challenging companies, knowingly or unknowingly, inserted new technologies into “advanced requirements definition method”, opening new possibilities for the value engineering equation, and changing the market balance. The established brands held on to the established technologies which gave themselves less options to do the value engineering exercise right.

What’s the CEO’s best strategy?

Well, there isn’t a best “1-fits-all-strategy”. The best strategy depends on your goal. If you decided to be a follower, like Samsung after the iPhone launch, then try to come close to the added value of your competitor for a lower cost. If you decide to be a challenger, then try to disrupt with new technologies and bring disruptive innovation (and added value) to the table, like the iPhone did during the Nokia reign.

There isn’t a superior product strategy (sorry).

Choose wisely

The CEO in the example above can choose out of 4 flavors of Value Engineering for his strategy:

• Invest and expand: develop a modular platform to have international economies of scale.
• The cash cow: design to cost of products to the new normal.
• Design to value: beating commodity for existing mature markets.
• The challenger: define the Minimum Valuable Viable Product for new markets.

Invest and expand: design to modularization

While originating from the car manufacturing industry, modularization can be applied wherever complex systems have to be managed and have already been successfully transferred to branches such as logistics and IT.

Modularization facilitates the standardization of product components (cost down) while still allowing variety in the product design in order to adapt to local markets, resulting in higher perceived value in the local market.

Is this the right strategy though? If you are present in different markets or market segments, if you are willing to invest in modularization, and you have a technology that can be tailored
to these markets, then this might be your way to go.

The cash cow: design to cost

If you are the product manager of the company’s cash cow, then this might be an interesting strategy. The value of the product goes down over time as the perceived value dilutes (see Kano model above). Therefore sales goes down which can be compensated by cost reductions of the product. Good examples are CD’s and mp3 players, which became cheaper over time and thus extended the revenue they created. This is the so called race to the bottom, where the one with the lowest cost takes the market.

Design to value: beating commodity

This is an interesting approach when your product is in a commoditised market. If there is a lot of competition and you want to avoid the cost race to the bottom, then you might reconsider the performance/cost equation.

This can be done by adding or removing features to a product. The Draftmark drafting system is an example where we removed certain features in order to focus on the core of the product: serve fresh beer. In this system we removed the most expensive and complex part: the cooling. We designed the product in such a way that it fits in a home fridge resulting in a retail price of only 49 dollar.

You could also review the complete value/cost equation by lowering the added value for the consumer in combination with a drastic price reduction, like Renault did with Dacia. Dacia uses Renault technologies and components of previous generation cars, and thus with lower perceived value for the consumer. Over time these technologies have been fully fine-tuned and the investments have been fully amortized, resulting in reliable low cost components.

The challenger: design the MVVP

You have found a solution for a hidden need, and you have developed a new technology, then you might conquer the market with your breakthrough product.

This is a different category as it isn’t a redesign of an existing product but a completely new product, often based on a new technology. The examples below were the first commercial GPS devices. They focused at the time on the minimum added value of a GPS: your location.

As you will be exploring uncharted waters with this approach, you will be facing big risks. Only 15% of new products are successful. This isn’t necessary a problem, if you are aware of the type of journey you are undertaking.

Challenging: R&D vs. marketing

In a previous engineering job, I was continuously exploring new ways to achieve higher performances of the product. It was only a few years later that I discovered it was reliability, not performance, that needed to be changed. I thought I had to develop a Ferrari while the market was expecting a Volvo. A clear mismatch between engineering objectives and market needs.

Value engineering falls in between R&D and marketing. Both departments tend to push the responsibility to the other side, or are aware of each other’s goals. R&D says: “Added value? That’s the task of marketing, not on my budget.” While marketing says: “BOM cost? Not my responsibility (nor budget).”

In general, R&D receives cost and quality requirements but doesn’t have the tools nor insights on how these two are balanced when the requirements are not 100% clear (or in contradiction). Therefore a continuous cooperation between R&D, product management and marketing is crucial during the development of new products, in the front end as well as in the engineering phases.

I find therefore that “Value Engineering” is a perfectly chosen definition for what it stands: value is market, engineering is R&D, resulting in a mix of the two.

Small exercise

You reached the end of the article and you might be wondering if it was worth your time and if you found it interesting. Consider the “interesting” part as the value and your time spent as cost. Considering the equation interesting/time, would you consider the time spent as value for money?

Time is money.

From my perspective: considering the time I spent on the article, the experience of writing it all down, and how many people I reached with this article, would I consider this article as good value engineering exercise? Time will tell.

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The post Value engineering appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.