You’ve heard the old saying: Time is money. Nevertheless, how much of our time at work is spent engaging in activities that add value to the organization? Non-value-added engineering activities involves work that consumes time, but does not add any value to product development. Engineering or design activities can be divided into three categories: (A) those that add value, (B) those that do not directly add value, but are necessary to enable value creation and (C) those that do not add value. The goal for any organization should be to improve the efficiency of type (B) activities and eliminate type (C) activities.
Engineers can spend as much as one-third of their time on non-value added activities. These can include searching for information, collecting data for other people, checking in/out data, incorporating changes made by other people and recreating data that couldn’t be found.
Some of these activities stem from working with the wrong information so there is unnecessary time spent reworking. The results of an activity are only as good as the inputs (garbage in, garbage out). Therefore, getting the right information (inputs) at the right time is key to converting non-value added activities to value-added activities.
Another common theme resulting in non-value added activities is waiting. This can include waiting for others to provide the information you need to continue your work, waiting for notifications that others have completed their tasks that you are dependent upon, and waiting for authorization to move forward, or complete work. Furthermore, one study has shown that on average, engineers spend about an hour a day searching websites for parts they need in designs. Another study concluded that engineers spend up to 45% of their time searching or recreating parts that already exist.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform helps engineers and designers reduce the number of non-value-added activities. Dassault Systèmes' industry-leading EXALEAD technology allows designers to search parts, designs, specifications, standards, test results and related data for engineering and manufacturing activities that are stored in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. In addition to full-text search, users can filter data by using 3DEXPERIENCE’s unique tagging system (6WTags) that categorize objects by Who, What, When, Where, Why and How criteria. Furthermore, subscriptions allow designers to be notified in real time when changes have been made on a design of interest - thus minimizing non-value waiting time.
To see the survey results and learn ways to reduce your non-value added tasks in your organization, download the Tech-Clarity how-to guide eBook: Reducing Non-Value Added Work in Engineering
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