Evaluation of the Process Design
One of the objectives in designing the process flow is to ensure that goods and services are produced at minimum cost. A major problem confronting the process engineer is to determine when this objective has been attained.Process design is a dynamic activity. Better tools and equipment are constantly being developed new materials are being introduced and new uses for old materials are discovered. Every process engineer must be alert to changes in the basic factors of volume, product quality level and equipment available. Any of these changes may affect the process design.
A basic tenet of the process engineer is that there is always a better way to make the product. There are techniques (cost reduction, value engineering, for example ) to do things better. Competition makes such policies pre requisites to success in manufacturing.The use of the staff specialist the process engineer contributes to this end. A clearly thought out plan of manufacturing will uncover possible pitfalls and predict the manufacturing cost .this estimate can be translated into anticipated profits. Careful planning ensures a complete coverage of all operation in manufacturing a product and of the costs involved.
Many intangibles need to be considered form time to among them are the cost of larger inventories caused by the levelling of production to prevent labour turnover, the problem of overheads distribution and the nature of the customer goodwill that may be lost through late deliveries or poor quality product. These and other intangibles enter into the total evaluation of the process design.