FYI: Definitions

FYI: What is IE, QE, and VE?

For your information, listed below are definitions of the disciplines of Industrial, Quality, and Value Engineering. Though the professions are all concerned with the utilization of people, machines, and methods, each makes a unique contribution to improved business and industrial productivity by using different tools and approaches to scientific problem-solving. FYI, here's the "official" definitions, followed by our brief condensations:

Industrial Engineering

"Industrial Engineering is concerned with the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of people, equipment, materials, and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems."

-from the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)

In short, IE relates people to the workplace. IE skills include ergonomics, materials handling, methods analysis, facilities planning and plant layout, work measurement, cost analysis, and several other activities.

Quality Engineering (also called Quality Management)

"Quality Management is a systematic way of guaranteeing that organized activities happen the way they are planned. It is a management discipline concerned with preventing problems from occurring by creating the attitudes and controls that make prevention possible."

- Philip B. Crosby, in his book Quality Is Free, McGraw-Hill, 1979

In short (but not much), quality systems assure that processes are done correctly.

Value Engineering

"Value Engineering (synonymous with the terms Value Management and Value Analysis) is a function-oriented, systematic team approach to provide value in a product, system, or service. Often, this improvement is focused on cost reduction; however, other improvements such as customer perceived quality and performance are also paramount in the value equation."

- from the Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE)

In short, VE provides the tools and techniques for those concerned with design of a product to offer the maximum utility (function) at the lowest cost. Value is function divided by cost (V=F/C).

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