Cost is what you pay for the product and Value is the worth you get for the cost you pay. Cambridge Dictionary defines value engineering as it is the process of reducing the cost of producing a product without reducing its quality. Quality Guru Philips Crosby define Quality as fitness for use. In his best seller “Quality is Free” that brought quality revolution to industry, Crosby advocated about the zero defect product. According to him every penny you do not spend on doing things wrong, over, or instead of, becomes half a penny right on the bottom line. If you concentrate on making quality certain, you can probably increase your profit by an amount equal to 5 to10% of your sales. That is a lot of money for free.

In other word any part or component which is not required for proper functioning of the product should be consciously eliminated and focus on improving the quality and reliability of component / system desired by the end user. While eliminating the functions / component and system the following questions should be asked.

• Does this elimination would affect the law of land (statutory & regulatory)
• Is my customer ready to pay extra for this?
• Are there any alternatives that improves the design & price without altering the customer requirements?
• Can we avoid the component / parts / systems?

The above statement just does not apply to product / system it is also applicable to services also or business processes where we apply that consciously to improve it.

Customer will be delighted if we can place all our product / process / services in the low-cost high value category from other three quadrant. The probability is always high when the product in design stage.

In our day-to-day activities we come across many where consciously if selected the value of the product / processes or services can be improved. Often, we follow the processes and procedure without questioning why only in the consideration that what is working well shall work well and with that attitude we do not improve or bring efficiency to system. For example, in pharmaceutical water (Water for injection, WFI) storage tank is fitted with a spray ball. Is it necessary when hot WFI at 80 Deg C are circulated in the tubing? When the pressurized water falls on the atmospheric tank at 80 Deg C it becomes steam and sanitize the tank top then wetting of tank top is not necessary by spray ball rather it increases the pressure drop in the loop and increase the operating cost 24 hrs 365 days basis.

Similarly, the loop return velocity at 1.2 m/s minimum does not have a firm basis where 1m/s is good enough. By increasing the return velocity, we not only increase the pumping cost but also reduce the availability of water to user point and elevates rouging and its treatment cost. Do we really require 316l EP tubes for pure steam? These are just few examples but based on the project we can drill down to each activity of a project let it be water system, HVAC, utility we can find many things being practices without a logical background and thereby increasing the capital and operational cost.

Sometime it is true that we consider too much for future that compel us to consider so many functions which is not required for the project. Every project has a success criterion, and we must focus on that and if project success criteria mentioned about those requirement, then it is must to consider other wise at best you should consider to provide the minimum flexibility so that changes is possible at a later date through another project criteria. Once a project criterion is finalized, we must work on that to make the project successful at a better cost, quality and timeline that ultimately improves the business.

Value engineering is not cutting the cost, but a systematic effort to minimize cost to improve the value Once the facility design is at an acceptable level, value engineering session should be carried out along with all SMEs and consultants to improve the project quality (scope), cost and schedule so that the project success criteria is met at a reasonable cost and time This exercise at design level has the potential to reduce the cost and time by minimum 10% if thoughts are applied consciously.

We, at Pharma Access have our subject matter experts who boast hands on experience in value engineering of greenfield and brownfield pharmaceutical projects Get in touch with us at sales@pharmaaccess.net or visit us at www.pharmaaccess.net to know more about the services we offer.