Miles Value Engineering Collection

Miles Collection

Lawrence D. Miles

What is value engineering?

A professionally applied, function-oriented, systematic team approach used to analyze and improve value in a product, facility design, system or service.

The Collection

The Miles Value Engineering Collection was donated to Wendt Library by the Miles Value Foundation in honor of Lawrence D. Miles, the founder of the discipline of Value Engineering (also known as Value Analysis.)

The collection includes:

  • personal papers
  • books
  • artifacts
  • the journal Value World (1977-present)
  • proceedings of the annual conference of the Society of American Value Engineers

How to get materials:

  • Use the (non-circulating) paper collection on the third floor of Wendt
  • Search Miles' works and other examples of value engineering online at MINDS@UW
  • Browse the SAVE Proceedings 1992-2000 online at SAVE International
  • Request copies using Library Express for a $2 fee if you are a UW user
  • Request copies for a fee from Wisconsin TechSearch if you are not with the University. (Phone: 608-262-5917)

More...

The Text

Eleanor Miles Walker gave permission to the Wendt Library to scan and make available the text by Miles, Techniques of Value Analysis and Engineering. First published in 1961, the work is now in it's third edition and has been translated into more than 12 languages.

History of the Lawrence D. Miles Value Engineering Reference Center

The Lawrence D. Miles Value Engineering Reference Center was established in honor of Lawrence D. Miles, the "Father of Value Analysis and Value Engineering."
In 1947 Lawrence D. Miles created and introduced the techniques of value analysis and value engineering at General Electric. Soon after he developed this systematic methodology, his concepts were recognized as a powerful approach to problem solving through function-based techniques, and they found their way outside GE to many parts of the world and many environments, including industry, healthcare, and government services. Miles' techniques have saved design engineers, manufacturing engineers, purchasing agents, and service providers millions of dollars by showing users "why so much unnecessary costs exists in everything we do and how to identify, clarify, and separate costs which bear no relationship to customers' needs or desires."

Larry Miles was confident enough to articulate that many decisions are based on honest but wrong beliefs and that his methods provide the highest customer acceptance at the lowest cost. He acknowledged how many professionals identify as solutions what they want to do and not what needs to be done.

After Miles' death in 1986, his wife, Eleanor Miles Walker, became an officer on the Board of the Lawrence D. Miles Value Foundation and donated $5,000 to the foundation to organize and present to the public everything related to VA/VE that her husband had collected over the years. She entrusted the project to Professor Thomas J. Snodgrass, a life-long colleague of Lawrence Miles. This led to the establishment in 1993 of the Lawrence D. Miles Value Engineering Reference Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Center includes (1) the Lawrence D. Miles Value Engineering Papers Collection, (2) the journal, Value World (1977-present) (3) proceedings from the annual conference of the Society of American Value Engineers from 1966-present, and (4) many related books, other references, and audiotapes and videotapes.

It is due, in large part, to the efforts of Professor Thomas J. Snodgrass that the Miles Value Engineering Research Center was established. Enid Simon was instrumental in locating the Center at the Wendt Library. Her effort and commitment is greatly appreciated.