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Some history
The Value Analysis appeared in the United States just after WWII.
General Electric was then facing a drastic increase in the industrial manufacturing cost prices mainly due to the more and more important share of purchasing in these costs. GE decided to assign Larry Miles (a purchase officer), to define an optimisation approach. Larry Miles got the genial idea to compare the product costs to the list of services that a user is actually expecting from it
He then made 2 statements :
- The use value of a product is composed of use functions and esteem functions
- 70 to 80% of a product cost is due to the way the service is provided (design solution) and not to the service itself
These are the basics of the value analysis designed by Larry Miles. Later on, he recommended to apply this approach from the very design steps of a product: it is the value engineering. Today these methods are known under the names VA-VE (Value Analysis / Value Engineering).
At the end of the 60’s Gilbert Barbey, French consultant for KBWhite, created the APTEmethod based on the VA -VE as well as a synthesis of different think leads and scientific research.