Value Engineering Analysis for a Leading Lawn Mower Brand

The Client and Challenge

Our client, a leading U.S. lawn mower manufacturer, offered quality mowers but struggled to price them competitively. The company came to Actalent to perform a value engineering exercise to identify ways to bring down its product cost with minimal additional investment, a shorter lead time, and a higher return on investment—all while maintaining product performance.

The Actalent Solution

Actalent’s technical team conducted a thorough analysis of the client’s requirements and expectations to propose a solution.

We began by working closely with the client to identify two competitor products with similar features and functions at the same price point, which the client then procured and shipped (along with the client’s product) to our team in India for analysis.

The team’s value engineering exercise involved:

1. Dismantling the products and creating the bill of materials (BOM) by documenting the parts and assembly details.
2. Estimating the costs of parts, subsystems and overall products using the Pareto analysis method to identify key cost contributors of the competitor products.
3. Estimating the manufacturing tool costs for sheet metal and plastic parts of the BOM using the Actalent’s Should Costing Analytical Model and database.
4. Benchmarking competitor product features and BOM costs.
5. Designing recommendations for ways the client could improve the value of the product while reducing costs.

The Actalent team provided the client with a detailed report of the findings, including the key outcomes and recommendations to help the client meet its objectives. The report also included data on the top cost contributors of the client’s product relative to its competitors, along with an assessment of the parts count, raw materials, costs, technology, and other key factors.

The Results

The findings gave the client a clear understanding of why its costs are higher than those of competitors, as well as how it could reduce them to better compete in the market. Ultimately, Actalent’s analysis helped the client scope a new project to implement the potential recommendations and reduce the overall BOM cost of its product by 22%.

The project concluded on time and on schedule using proven best practices, processes and templates for value engineering projects. Actalent’s experienced teams were able to leverage the right stakeholders to expedite customs and overcome shipping challenges to keep the project on track.

Expertise

• Siemens NX 1872