„Make things as simple as possible – but no simpler than that.“
Einstein.
But the man was simply brilliant, because his thinking was brilliantly simple. But by the same token, we mustn’t allow ourselves to make things too simple either. Too simple would mean going on as we have before.
Industrialization effort and customer value
Let’s imagine a seesaw: Today industrialization effort and customer value are in balance. At first glance, that’s a good thing.
@ Graphic: Christoph Niermann
The catch: In practice, greater customer value takes a greater industrialization effort. What we need is more customer value with less effort. The core challenge is in optimizing the relationship between customer value and industrialization effort. The aim is to achieve an equal or even greater customer value in the product with much less effort, and by extension
less time and with less investment. The customer value is to be seen as a result of the industrialization and the industrialization effort as a means to that end.
@ Graphic: Christoph Niermann
The relationship between results and effort in turn corresponds to a “return on”, analogous to
a return on investment or return on capital employed. Since the activities in the industrialization process are at root engineering tasks, we can speak of a Return on Engineering.