The benchmarking process helped quantify the savings that could be gained from working with cross-regional suppliers. Suppliers that offer low hanging fruit type of opportunities. Suppliers that have significant opportunities for improvement but are not yet ready to embrace the ultimate goal of lean manufacturing. Donnelly s efforts in such cases would concentrate on developing the short-term opportunities that do exist, rather than educating the suppliers on lean manufacturing principles. Suppliers that don t do enough business with Donnelly to warrant a full kaizen program, yet have targeted opportunities for the parts they do supply.
Many suppliers have clear opportunities for improvement.
But the potential return on those improvements would be significantly below the cost required of a full-blown kaizen program. At this point the operation also is transitioning from the kaikaku approach to the kaizen initiatives. Both VA and VE involve a planned, clean-sheet approach to problem solving that focuses on specific design and process characteristics. Value analysis is used to improve value after the start of production, while value engineering is used before costly expenditures are incurred. Whereas SPI focuses on specific changes made to an isolated element of the process, value analysis, and value engineering consider the larger design impacts on cost.