Failure Analysis & Value Engineering

We don’t just design products from scratch, sometimes we also fix broken or poor designs. With legacy products that have been around for some time, issues can arise. What may have been cutting edge when it was designed, might now be inefficient and costly. Something that worked brilliantly for years, has suddenly started failing. Sound familiar? If so let us have a look.

Failure Analysis

Based on decades of experience, manufacturing many millions of parts (I’ve officially lost count) there isn’t much we haven’t seen in terms of failures.
We have a very disciplined approach to failure analysis. Using a systematic approach to quickly identify potential root causes, which are usually as a result of process breakdown at the manufacturing stage, but can also be caused by issues with raw materials, environmental conditions etc.

We will attend your manufacturing facility and perform a full unbiased investigation. This is especially helpful if your manufacturing is outsourced, because you want to see the full picture.

Once we determine a root cause, we will then recreate the failure to prove the theory.

We will publish to you a full root cause analysis with all our findings, and a detailed preventative action report.

Value Engineering

You might wonder why we put Value Engineering with Failure Analysis, it’s quite simple really – to be able to effectively design or redesign any part, it’s fundamental to know where all the potential points of failure may be.

Advances in materials and manufacturing technologies, means that if your product is more than a few years old, you may have already fallen behind the competitiveness curve. You could be achieving the same quality product using less material and producing more efficiently with less weight. This not only benefits you, but in today’s world means you are moving towards a much more sustainably produced product, which greatly benefits our environment.

The first step in this process is a feasibility study, here we review your current product and identify the potential areas of improvement. We fully cost out the development cost and that is weighted against the savings generated. Because this is value engineering, for a project to be successful, it must deliver savings. Our typical metric here is that any NRE cost must be recouped by savings in 1 year. (NRE is Non-Recurring Expense, such as design cost or Capital expense).

During our careers we have delivered millions of euro of savings through value engineering programs. We now want to bring this expertise to you and deliver savings to you.