Today, product development often has to meet several objectives at once: cost, quality, weight, performance, delivery capability, regulatory requirements and, increasingly, environmental impact.
These objectives can compete with one another.
A lower-cost solution is not automatically more sustainable. A lower-CO₂ solution may incur higher costs. A change of material may reduce weight but compromise other technical requirements.
Sustainability is therefore not an isolated add-on topic but a further target variable in the product decision-making process.
Functions as a Common Reference
A function-oriented view provides a helpful starting point.
Instead of simply comparing materials or components, it is possible to examine:
Which function has to be performed – and which alternative solutions perform it, with what effort and what impact?
This allows technical concepts to be compared across several dimensions.
Don’t Play Costs and Environmental Impact Off Against Each Other
Depending on the project, the following can be considered, for example:
- manufacturing costs,
- material usage,
- weight,
- energy demand,
- CO₂ impact,
- service life,
- repairability,
- recyclability,
- customer value.
Not every project needs all the criteria. What matters is making the target variables relevant to the specific task transparent.
Customer Requirements Remain Relevant
Sustainable product features do not automatically create market value either.
It should therefore be checked which requirements customers, legislators and other stakeholders actually impose and how these are weighted.
QFD, Function Analysis and evaluation methods can help to link sustainability targets with technical requirements and customer value.
A Methods Toolkit for Conflicting Objectives
The same situation often arises in practice: a decision has to be made between cost, quality, weight, sustainability, CO₂ emissions and other requirements – and each department weights these objectives differently. Without a common basis, the discussion easily ends in opinions rather than traceable arguments.
This is where Value Analysis plays to its strengths. It offers a whole toolkit of methods for resolving such conflicting objectives in a structured way:
- Function Analysis: clarifies which functions a solution must perform – creating a neutral basis for comparing different technical concepts.
- QFD: weights the requirements of customers, legislators and other stakeholders and shows which objectives really matter to the market.
- Function Cost Analysis: allocates costs to functions and shows where the effort and the importance of a function diverge.
- Cost-Benefit Assessment and Value Index: compares the effort and benefit of individual functions.
- Detailed Objectives and Evaluation Criteria: translates project objectives – such as cost, weight or CO₂ targets – into measurable criteria before solutions are discussed.
- Creativity techniques: expand the solution space so that the choice is not limited to familiar compromises.
- Evaluation methods: compare concepts against several weighted criteria and make the decision traceable for everyone involved.
The advantage lies in the interplay: objectives are agreed in advance, solutions are evaluated against the same functions and criteria, and the remaining conflicting objectives are named openly instead of being decided covertly as the project progresses.
Value Analysis as a Framework for Conflicting Objectives
The strength of Value Analysis does not lie in optimising a single key figure. It structures the search for solutions that meet several requirements.
One possible sequence is:
- define relevant sustainability and customer objectives
- understand the product’s functions
- analyse costs and, where applicable, environmental impact
- identify particularly relevant opportunity areas
- develop alternative technical solutions
- evaluate concepts against several criteria
- decide on impacts and conflicting objectives transparently
Current Technical Work at the VDI
How sustainability and CO₂ impact can be methodically integrated into Value Analysis is currently also being addressed within the VDI. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Marchthaler is currently working on this topic with fellow experts in a technical committee of the VDI Value Management and Value Analysis Division, where he is developing a guideline.
Further Reading
- What Are Value Analysis / Value Engineering and Value Management?
- Function Analysis: Looking at Tasks Instead of Components
- Function Cost Analysis: Allocating Costs to Functions
- QFD: Weighting Customer Requirements Systematically
- Systematic Product Cost Reduction
- Value Analysis Project Examples and References