Technical companies are often proud of high-performance products.
In principle, that is justified.
It becomes a problem when technical performance creates costs that are barely relevant to the customer’s buying decision.
This is where overengineering can arise:
The product meets requirements, has tolerances or offers functions whose additional benefit does not justify the effort required.
Overengineering Is Not Simply “Too Much Quality”
Quality and technical robustness are important product characteristics.
Reducing them across the board would not be a sensible cost strategy.
Rather, the crucial question is:
What performance does the customer actually need – and how much additional technical reserve still creates relevant value?
This requires a differentiated view of requirements.
How Does Overengineering Arise?
Possible causes include:
- historical specifications are carried over,
- safety margins add up,
- developers aim for the maximum technical performance,
- different customer groups are combined in one product,
- competition is answered purely in technical terms,
- actual use is not sufficiently taken into account,
- internal requirements are mixed up with customer requirements,
- variants and special requests grow over the years.
None of these causes is automatically wrong.
However, they should be made transparent.
Distinguishing Customer Requirements Clearly
An important step is to look at requirements according to their significance.
Not every requirement is a key buying criterion.
Some requirements are mandatory, others increase customer value and still others are barely relevant to certain user groups.
Methods such as QFD can help to link requirements to technical characteristics in a structured way.
Looking at Functions, Not Just Specifications
Function Analysis complements this perspective.
It asks:
- What task has to be performed?
- For whom is it relevant?
- Which technical solution performs it today?
- What effort does this involve?
- Is there a simpler alternative?
This makes it possible to question the existing technical solution without prematurely eliminating necessary functions.
Function Costs Make the Effort Visible
Overengineering often remains invisible as long as only total product costs are considered.
When costs are allocated to functions, conspicuous areas can become visible.
A technically demanding function can cause very high costs even though its importance to the customer is limited.
This is not automatic proof of waste.
But it is a good reason for a more in-depth analysis.
Variants as an Additional Source of Overengineering
A company may try to cover as many customer groups as possible with one product at the same time.
This often leads to:
- additional functions,
- higher performance reserves,
- more complex assemblies,
- more variants,
- higher logistics and production costs.
A differentiated view can show whether certain performance attributes are only relevant to individual customer segments.
Objective: Not Cheaper, but Better Value
Value Analysis does not aim to remove as much technical performance as possible.
The aim is a better relationship between:
- customer requirements,
- functions,
- the technical solution
- and costs.
Sometimes this means simplification.
Sometimes, however, the analysis also shows that an important customer function should be improved – even if this initially creates additional costs.
Further Reading
- Tolerances and Specifications as Cost Drivers
- Systematic Product Cost Reduction
- QFD: Weighting Customer Requirements Systematically
- Function Analysis: Looking at Tasks Instead of Components
- Function Cost Analysis: Allocating Costs to Functions
- Reducing Variant Complexity
- Cost-Benefit Assessment and Value Index
- What Are Value Analysis / Value Engineering and Value Management?