Thought leader Abate Kassa finds the U.S. government's arbitrary cost-cutting directives of austerity measures or sequestration as a perfect example of moving in the wrong direction. Their system follows rule-sense rather than value-sense. In this book, Mr. Kassa proposes reengineered value analysis/value engineering (VA/VE) as the way to deliver superior service at a minimum cost.

By mastering the powerful re-engineered VA/VE problem-solving value methodology (PISERIA) outlined in this book, any organization regardless of industry 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. In the book, Mr. Kassa 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. By so doing, the author hopes to positively disrupt the status quo of the siloed thinking of these fragmented methodologies.

If you are engaged in the pursuit of excellence and are ready to make the leap from good to great, while generating an immediate payback, you will want to empower your people with an understanding of the reengineered VA/VE outlined in this book.

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(TM) 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 Management and a former Certified Value Specialist (CVS) with SAVE International. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and a master's degree in government and politics from St. John's University, New York City, New York.