ABSTRACT
Value engineering (VE) is a systematic, interdisciplinary examination of factors affecting the cost of a product so as to devise means of achieving the specified purpose at the required standard of quality and reliability at the target cost. The three Nth-look VE approaches are designed to be applied at different stages of the product design process. Zero-look VE represents the logical extension of VE into the earliest stage of the design process, the concept proposal stage, when the basic concept of the product is developed and its preliminary quality, cost, and investment targets are established. First-look VE, which is more traditional and is used by numerous Japanese firms, focuses on the major elements of the product design and is defined as developing new products from concepts. Second-look VE is applied during the last half of the planning stage and the first half of the development and product preparation stage.
