Application of Knowledge Management System Practices in Value ...

ISSN: 2394-3122 (Online) Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2015

SK International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Hub Journal for all Subjects Research Article / Survey Paper / Case Study Published By: SK Publisher (www.skpublisher.com)

Application of Knowledge Management System Practices in Value Engineering Study Sojan. V. V1

S. N. Teli2

Saraswati college of Engg Kharghar Navi Mumbai India

Professor, HOD (Dept. of Mech.Engg.) Saraswati college of Engg. India

Abstract: This topic is based on the utilization of knowledge management system (KMS) practice in the conceptualization of value engineering. To enhance the KMS activities theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) has been utilized. The TRIZ is applied in the creativity phase of the problem solving. The main theme of this study points towards need of a database on past, current and future activities or projects that will undertake in value analysis. Database management system can be utilized for the generation of such database. The existing level of software development will enrich this endeavor. In the case study; research suggests a methodology for the product development process in an automotive company, aiming at the correct systematic approach of Value Engineering (VE) and target-costing in cost management. I. INTRODUCTION Value engineering (VE) is an organized approach to obtain the optimum value of unit cost by adding more features to the existing project or product and reducing the cost through critical analysis. This has to be done by maintaining the existing quality, safety, reliability, and maintainability. Value engineering can be utilized at any of the three main stages of a construction project; planning and design stage, construction, maintenance and operation stage. The greatest potential for the application of the concept of value engineering exists during the planning and design stage. However the solutions generated through the Value Engineering application model are often biased or poor. One of the reasons for this is the lack of robust steps to quantitatively measure, evaluate, and aggregate the expert’s opinion for Value Engineering application. Another cause is that the Value Engineering studies are normally starts from the scratch due the absence of the historical data. The importance of the knowledge management system is becoming a need here. The knowledge management system is to support the knowledge creation process, code and retain ideas from historical VE studies and share this valuable information. II. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (KMS) It is important to understand the concept of knowledge management, where many authors agree that knowledge management is often promoted as significant source of competitive advantage. Beckman (1999) defines knowledge management as the formalization of and access to experience, knowledge, and expertise that create new capabilities, enable superior performance, encourage innovation and enhance customer value. While Colman (1999) employs knowledge management as an umbrella for a wide variety of interdependent and interlocking functions which include knowledge creation, knowledge valuation and metrics, knowledge mapping and indexing, knowledge transport, storage and distribution, knowledge sharing. III. SIGNIFICANCE OF KMS PRACTICE IN VE/VA STUDY A traditional VE study mainly relies on free-thinking techniques (e.g., the brainstorming technique) to generate creative ideas and solutions, and it usually starts from scratch without adequately utilizing the knowledge and results generated from previous VE studies partly because the lack of a KMS. Obviously, the chance of generating an innovative solution is limited by © 2015, SK Publisher All Rights Reserved

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Sojan et al.,

SK International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Hub Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2015 pg. 1-5 the current VE team member’s experience, knowledge and creativity. Furthermore, in a traditional VE study, little effort is made to understand the essential problems of a project. Therefore, there is no guidance on the direction in which the search for effective and robust solutions is efficient. IV. THEORY OF INVENTIVE PROBLEM SOLVING (TRIZ) TRIZ is a romanized acronym of Russian “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”, which is a body of knowledge for inventive problem-solving that has been developed by TRIZ researchers through abstracting and generalizing the world's most genius innovation principles after examining over 2.5 million international patents. TRIZ researchers hold that (1) the advancement of inventions obeys certain universal principles of creation, (2) all innovations across industries and sciences follow a handful number of inventive principles, (3) technology evolves according to certain trends, (4) the idealization of a solution is a process to destroy conflicts and trade-offs or to transform harmful elements of a system into useful resources. V. CREATIVITY PHASE The TRIZ concepts and tools that are incorporated in the VE-KMS to enhance the creativity phase of the VE process are as follows:- (1) collect project explicit knowledge and VE team information , (2) break project into sub-systems, (3) identify harmful functions in each sub-system, (4) identify and solve technical contradictions, (5) identify and solve physical contradictions, (6) conduct substance – field analysis, (7) improve the project according to technological evolution trends. VI. TECHNICAL CONTRADICTIONS A technical contradiction represents the conflict between two parameters of a system/subsystem. This contradiction occurs when improving one parameter of a system/subsystem worsens another parameter. This means the measure taken to remove/minimize one harmful function will worsen another useful function. Two examples are: (1) a vehicle has higher horsepower but uses more fuel and (2) an electric vehicle can go long distances between recharging but the battery weight gets too high to move at all. A conventional approach to solve this dilemma is to seek a compromise between the two parameters. However, this is not an ideal solution. VII. PHYSICAL CONTRADICTIONS A physical contradiction results from incompatible requirements on the same parameter of a system/subsystem, i.e., this parameter is required to be modified in two opposite directions to remove or minimize a harmful function. Two examples are: (1) a highway should be wide for easy traffic flow but narrow for low impact on communities and (2) a frame should be heavy for structural safety but be light for cost and ease of assembly. Physical contradictions do not occur as frequently as technical contradictions. VIII. SUBSTANCE-FIELD ANALYSIS The components of a technical system perform various functions (as mentioned earlier, a function in TRIZ refers to the interaction between two components). There are mainly five types of interactions (useful, harmful, excessive, insufficient, and transformation) among which useful and harmful interactions are the common ones. In substance-field analysis, an interaction is graphically represented by a triangular model after abstracting the two components and their interaction.

Substance – field diagram

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Sojan et al.,

SK International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Hub Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2015 pg. 1-5 IX. DATA WAREHOUSE DEVELOPMENT

The development of a valid information scheme is critical for successful knowledge management. The information scheme addresses how the comprehensive information repository is organized and formalized on the storage medium for effective and efficient knowledge development. The entity relationship diagram (ERD) is a simple semantic network model for designing a database. The ERD should be designed in accordance with some understandable classification or framework of information. The ERD for the database are normally developed in Microsoft Access. X. CODING OF DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE IN THE DATABASE The strength and utility of a KMS depend largely on the quality and scope of the domain knowledge coded into the knowledge base. Reflecting the importance of the domain knowledge, all tables of the database that store practical solutions resulted from VE studies have two common fields, the VE initiator and the domain. The VE initiator documents the name and relevant information of the person who assumes a leadership role in the development of an innovative idea or solution. The domain documents the discipline of the idea or solution. The two fields allow a knowledge search to be done by the domain, initiator or the combination of both. XI. A CASE STUDY The case study was developed based on an idea proposed by an employee of the VE department of applying new technology concepts to the existent systems of the product/vehicle, aiming at a break of paradigm that could lead to great innovations. XII. METHODOLOGY The following steps carried out for the implementation of the project. 1. Concept Value Engineering. 2. Project Value Engineering:- 2.1 Preparatory, 2.2 Information, 2.3 Analytic,

2.4

Creative, 2.5 Judgement. 3. Planning 4. Validation XIII. PROJECT-VE At this stage of VE application, the six steps suggested in the proposed methodology were carried out. Preparatory As a primary source of information, specialists in the company, such as cost analysts, electrical and mechanical engineers, as well as technical documen- tation about electric starters were consulted. As a secondary source, customers were inquired

in a market

research,

and

the supplier

of pneumatic starter brought technical information about the

imported pneumatic starter, such as catalogs, drawings and the product itself, besides commercial information such as a comparison with competitors, test results with customers and price quotation. The figure shows the drawing of the pneumat ic starter of the contacted supplier, to be developed in this case study.

Drawing of the pneumatic starter.

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Sojan et al.,

SK International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Hub Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2015 pg. 1-5 XIV. INFORMATION

At this stage, the study of QFD and cost calculation was developed. Through Matrix QFD it was possible to identify the specification of larger impact on customer attributes, in the evaluation as a function of their relationships. It was the drive system, in this case, the pneumatic engine-starter. Once the priority had been identified, the development was focused on that feature of the product that could maximize customer value. The cost of the product under study was also compared with that of the current product, whose cost was defined as the target-price to the supplier. Analytic At this stage, the following steps were accomplished. 1. Identify and define the product’s functions, in accordance with the functional analysis, which uses measurable substantives and active verbs. At first the product under analysis was deployed in five systems: Drive, Rotation, Feeding, Fixture and Lubrication Systems. For each system, the main function was identified according to the compo- nents that compose it. The functional study was simplified to a list containing only functions with larger relevance. 2. Classify functions as main or secondary. The identified functions were classified as main, those that are essential to the product function (i.e., ‘‘start engine’’) and, secondary, those that only support the main function. 3. Build the functional structure of the product. The diagram of the Function Analysis System Tech- nique (FAST) was drawn to determine the interaction of the functions, supplying a systemic vision of the product under analysis, besides facilitating the scope of the study. 4. Estimate the cost of the functions. To minimize the difference in cost between the current and the proposed system, cost calculations were done for all the engine-starter components, through one of the VE techniques of analyzing each component and estimating its system cost at the level of its parts (reverse engineering). The cost calculation was done using the procedure for target-price calculation. This calculation supplies parameters for the advanced planning of project costs, besides being the basis of the target- cost and cost reduction target for suppliers. For the calculation of target-price, the supply of the engine- starter was considered to be nationalized. As a result, the following final cost of industrialization was reached. For the calculation of function costs, the functions that are related with the scope line of the engine-starter were selected (according to FAST). Based on the estimated cost per component, this cost was allocated to each function as a function of its effective influence to provide them. For components that provide only one function, the component cost was fully allocated to the function(Ibusuki and Kaminski, 2003). With the calculation

of estimated

cost per function,

the target-cost per function should be determined, starting from the target-cost of the product. In order to do that, each function was compared with the others and the relative importance of each one was determined by means of a numeric evaluation supported by Mudge Diagram. This comparison has the purpose of determining how each function relates to the complete system, so as to determine which is of higher importance. Considering the relative importance o f each function, the target-cost per function was calculated, based on the estimated total cost of the product. XV. CONCEPT-VE An attempt was made to develop a new concept for the function ‘‘start engine’’ in diesel engines of the company’s product/vehicle, according to the proposal

of Concept-VE

of introducing

some concept that had not been previously

identified. A market research was carried out, through the Internet and contact with suppliers, in search of concept alternatives on the market for the function under analysis. It was verified that, besides the currently used

electric

drive

system, hydraulic, spring and pneumatic engine-starters were also available. Creative

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Sojan et al.,

SK International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Hub Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2015 pg. 1-5 This stage is considered essential for the study’s success, because VE is based on the creation of new and different

alternatives to provide the function. Thus, alternatives should be generated to provide the function at lesser cost, still maintaining the requested quality. Judgment The creative stage is followed by the analysis and judgment stage, where ideas are evaluated and the feasible ones are combined and selected. Table 8 shows the judgments of the presented proposals. The proposals selected by the specialists with the highest technical and economical potential were proposals 3, 5 and 9. A combination of these three proposals was elaborated, suggesting a change in the housing material to formed steel instead of cast aluminum, with connection of the tube by clamp through an intermediary rubber tube. As a result, a reduction in weight of the engine-starter was estimated, making it possible to reduce the number of screws. Planning The main objective of this stage consists in developing

a

plan

with

all

the

technical

and economical details

approached in the case study, attempting to show how the initial project was conceived and which are the team’s proposals, high lighting the cost reduction proposals, besides the necessary resources to obtain them. The best way ‘‘to sell t he idea’’ should be explored. XVI. CONCLUSION The creative phase of the VE workshop determines the success or failure of a VE study. Traditionally, a VE study mainly relies on the brainstorming technique to generate ideas and solutions and it usually starts from scratch without adequately utilizing the knowledge generated from previous VE studies. There is no guidance on the direction in which the search for effective and robust ideas and solutions is efficient. There is a need to improve the efficiency of the VE practice for better outcomes. The case study in an automotive company identified some positive points such as strong performance of cost planning in the PDP, development through multifunctional teams, It acts to supply information that guides the activities of cost planning for the entire company, measuring and monitoring the activities to achieve the company’s strategic objectives that are the keys to the success of an integrated system of VE and target-costing, Integration of cost planning with the company’s global strategy, Use of tools and techniques Reverse Engineering, DFMA, QFD, that support VE. References 1.

S. Assaf, O.A. Jannadi, A. Al-Tamimi, Computerized system for application of value engineering methodology, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, ASCE 14 (3) (2000) 206–214.

2.

L.W. Bobey, R.W. Tweedie, 23rd avenue interchange gateway boulevard/Calgary trail geotechnical investigation, Interim Report No. 1 Prepared for Value Engineering, vol. 42, Thurber Engineering Ltd., Edmonton, AB, 2004.

3.

P. Carrillo, P. Chinowsky, Exploiting knowledge management: the engineering and construction perspective, Journal of Management in Engineering, ASCE 22 (1) (2006) 2–10.

4.

D.W. Clarke, Integrating TRIZ with value engineer: discovering alternatives to traditional brainstorming and the selection and use of ideas, SAVE Engineering International Conference, SAVE International, San Antonio, Texas, 1999, pp. 42–51.

5.

R.H. Clough, G.A. Sears, S.K. Sears, Construction Project Management, 4th edition Wiley, New York, NY, 2000

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