By mastering the re-engineered value analysis & value engineering (VA/VE) problem-solving value methodology outlined in this book, any organization will be able to self-diagnose problems and self-discover solutions. The book is the product of Abate Kassa's dual lenses of experience and research over four decades. The book updates and upgrades VA/VE by integrating popular improvement methodologies, including Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Total Quality Management, Kaizen, Business Process Reengineering, and Project Management, into the scientific method of the value methodology he dubbed PISERIA.

Abate O. Kassa, author, consultant, and educator in Value Management, is president of AOK Consulting & Education, established in 1973 and based in New York. He is a former purchasing manager for Ethiopian Airlines, where he introduced a corporate-wide value-improvement process after value-training 343 management staff and also revitalized its employee suggestion system. Mr. Kassa combines resource and process consultancy to provide organic change for his client organizations instead of the traditional mechanistic change. As a Nichepreneur specializing in value management and purchasing & supply management, he assists his clients to optimize the value of their operations. Mr. Kassa has also gained experience in international public procurement working with the International Trade Centre/UNCTAD/WTO on a $1 billion import procurement project in Africa and also served as an ITC consultant in the Pacific Forum Island Countries of Samoa, Kiribati, Tonga, Niue, Tuvalu, and Fiji. He was a regular speaker for many years at the affiliates of the Institute for Supply Management and the American Management Association in the United States, where he used his own workbooks (unpublished) to teach Value Management and Purchasing & Supply Management. Mr. Kassa was retained as executive director of the Institute for Supply Management-New York for 19 years (1981 2000). He was the recipient of ISM-New York's 1992 J. H. Leonard Award for his contributions in institutional capacity building of ISM-New York as a center of excellence in purchasing and supply management. Once a science master at his elementary school as a teenager, he has now anchored the value methodology in the common knowledge of the scientific method to reengineer value engineering; and this book is the product of his dual lenses of experience and research over many years. Mr. Kassa is a lifetime Certified Purchasing Manager (CPM) with the Institute for Supply