Value Driven Product Planning and Systems Engineering

Engineers and scientists often need to sell an innovative idea for a new product to top management. Those who occupy product planning positions also need to be constantly scanning ideas for improving value. The engineer as product planner must learn to think like its major competitor using customer value as a guide. This book provides essential support for engineers and scientists who are required to make realistic business cases for new product concepts.

H.E. Cook, formerly Head of the Department of General Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and a Fellow of ASM. He set the vision for the newly inaugurated M.S. and Ph.D. programs in Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering within the General Engineering Department that led to the merger with Industrial Engineering and the formation of a new department named Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. While a member of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Dr Cook held the Grayce Wicall Gauthier and later the Joseph Gauthier Professorships. Originally a theorist in materials science, his current research and teaching interests are in the broad aspects of product/technology management including product planning, value analysis, marketing research, design and analysis of strategic experiments (Six Sigma), and advanced quality systems. Dr Cook has also held a variety of research, engineering and management positions during 17 years in the automotive industry at Ford and Chrysler. He is a consultant to Birchwood Consultants International Ltd., and a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Board of General Motors.

L.A. Wissmann has worked for the Ford Motor Company as a Vehicle Engineer, and has spent time at General Motors as a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Customer Driven Quality, where he helped to develop new methods for building business cases for new technologies in the R&D pipeline. During this period he was also pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. He is currently employed by Hamilton Sundstrand.