Tag Archives: Procurement

How to lever “Design to Customer Value” in your daily work

In one of my previous articles I introduced you to different methods or levers to maximize the outcome of your work. We call it “Design to Value”. The article on “Design to Cost” was the first one. I continue you now with an article on “Design for Customer Value”.

It is a little bit confusing that “Design to Customer Value” is a sub category of “Design to Value”, but you really have to highlight here the “Customer”. Essentially it is about to understand the real needs of the customer and how the product can generate value for our customer.

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Why to employ Cost Engineers while Procurement Engineers are available?

What is the difference between Procurement and Cost Engineers and is it worth to have both in the team setup? This will be very roughly discussed by using an example and providing a guideline when this might make sense for a company. As always there is no simple answer. Some facts might help to make the decision: size of company; size of commodity, complexity of commodity & skill set of procurement engineers. Fact is that both roles (should) have at least 50% overlap in their expertise.

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Procurement tasks prior to the start of a R&D project

The work of Procurement Engineering does not start with the kick-off of a R&D project. There are tons of tasks prior to the design work. The following post will provide a crisp list of necessary activities and tasks before the real design work starts. Before we go into the details we need to say goodbye to the idea that procurement buys stuff engineering has designed and the we start to work once the design is finished. When procurement is invited to discuss how to set up a cross-functional team to support the newest development project the responsible procurement engineer has already a full list with different home work activities. So, what is to do …?

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