History and Philosophy of Value Engineering / Management

• The concept evolved from the work of Lawrence D. Miles who, in the 1940's who was a purchase engineer with the General Electric Company (G.E.C). 
• At that time, manufacturing industry in the United States was running at maximum capactiy to supply the allies with arms. 
• There were shortage in steel, coppper, broonze, nickel, bearing electrical resistors, and many other materials and components. 
• G.E.C wished to expands its production of turbo supercharger for B24 bombers from 50 to 1000 per week. 
• Miles was assigned the task of purchasing the material to permit this. 
• Often he was unable to obtain the specific material or component specified by the designer, so Miles reasoned, "if I can not obtain the product, I must obtain an alternative which performs the same function". 
• Where alternatives were found they were tested and approved by the designer. 
• Miles observed that many of the substitutes were providing equal or better performance at a lower cost and from this evolved the first definition of value engineering. 
• In 1957, Mr. Miles and his team developed a step- by step system, called value Anlysis (VA) to analyze product's cost and function to remove out unnecessary costs. 
• As a resyults of substantial investment, the new methodology, VA, was developed, tested, and proven to be highly effective. However, it wasn't until 1952 that VA begin its growth throughout industry. 
• The Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE) was formed in 1959 as a professional society dedicated to the advancement of VE through a better understanding of the principles, methods, and concepts involved. 
• now known as SAVE International, SAVE has grown to over 1,500 members and currently has over 350 active Certified Value Specialists (CVS) in the U.S.