(1) Under the premise that the relative price of the material itself meets the requirements of use, the material with low price should be selected as far as possible. This is particularly important for mass-manufactured parts.

(2) The utilization rate of materials can be improved by using no chip or less chip processing, such as die forging, precision casting, stamping and so on.

(3) Materials can be used to save valuables. Rare materials may be replaced by other materials due to supply reasons or economic requirements. For example, when the strength is the main requirement, the material with higher strength and higher price can also be replaced by the material with poor strength and low price, and the structure size can be increased appropriately. When wear resistance or corrosion resistance is the main requirement, the material with good wear resistance or corrosion resistance can be selected for various surface hardening or anticorrosion treatment instead of wear resistance or anticorrosion. For rare materials, ordinary materials can also be replaced, such as aluminum bronze instead of tin bronze to make bearing.

(4) Starting from simplifying the supply and storage of material varieties. For small batch production parts, the variety and specification of materials used on the same machine should be reduced as much as possible.