Innovation with TRIZ

Today, evolution of science and technology has reached tremendous rate. Major breakthroughs in sciences, technology, medicine, and engineering make our everyday life more and more comfortable. Today it is nearly impossible to find an engineer who does not use complex mathematical tools for formal modeling of design products, CAD systems for drawings, electronic handbooks and libraries, and the Internet to find necessary data, information, and knowledge. But what happens when we need to invent a radically new solution? To generate a new idea? To solve a problem when no known problem solving methods provide results? What tools and methods do we have to cope with these situations? It happens that when it comes to producing new ideas, we still rely heavily on thousands-years-old trials and errors method. It is good when a new brilliant and feasible idea is born quickly. But what price we have to pay for it most of the time? Waste of time, money and human resources. Can we afford this today, when competition is accelerating every day and capability to innovate becomes a crucial factor of survival? Certainly, not. But if there is anything that can help? Fortunately, the answer is “yes”. To considerably improve innovative process and avoid costly trials and errors, leading innovators use TRIZ, a scientifically-based methodology for innovation. Relatively little known outside the former Soviet Union before the 90, it rapidly gained popularity at world-leading corporations and organizations, among which are DSM, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Motorola, NASA, Procter & Gamble, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Unilever, just to name a few. This article presents a brief overview of TRIZ and some its techniques with focus on technological applications of TRIZ. TRIZ origins TRIZ (a Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) was originated by the Russian scientist and engineer Genrich Altshuller. In the early 50, Altshuller started massive studies of patent collections. His goal was to find out if inventive solutions were the result of chaotic and unorganized thinking or there were certain regularities that governed the process of creating new inventions. After scanning approximately 400.000 patent descriptions, Altshuller found that only 2% of all patented solutions were really new, which means that they used some newly discovered physical phenomenon – such as the first radio receiver or photo camera. 98% of patented inventions used some already known physical principle but were different in its implementation (for instance, both a car and a conveyer may use the air cushion principle). In addition, it appeared that a great number of inventions complied with a relatively small number of basic inventive principles. Therefore, 98% of all new problems can be solved by using previous experience if such experience is presented in a certain form, for instance as principles or patterns. This discovery had given impact on further studies which let to discovery the basic principles of invention. More than thirty years of research resulted in revealing and understanding of origins of an inventive process, and formulation of general principles of inventive problem solving. At the same time, first TRIZ techniques were developed. Later, many researchers and practitioners worldwide united efforts and largely extended Altshuller’s approach with new methods and tools. Today, a number of companies and universities worldwide are involved to enhancing TRIZ techniques and putting them to the practical use. Modern TRIZ TRIZ offers a number of practical techniques, which help to analyze existing products and situations, extract core problems and generate new solution concepts in a systematic way. TRIZ fundamentally changes our view on solving inventive problems and innovative design as shown in figure 1. Instead of random generation of thousands of alternatives among which only one can work, TRIZ uses systematic approach to generate new ideas as sh. International Journal of Engineering Research and General Science Volume 2, Issue 3, April-May 2014 ISSN 2091-2730 233 www.ijergs.org Fig 1. Modern TRIZ Modern TRIZ is a large volume of knowledge. It includes such techniques as Inventive Principles, Patterns of standard solutions, Functional Analysis, Databases of physical, chemical and geometrical effects, Trends and Patterns of technology evolution and Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving, which is also known as ARIZ. TRIZ is not easy to learn. However, most of its techniques can be learned and applied independently that simplifies the processes of learning and implementation. This is shown in Fig. (1) Common Patterns of Inventions Let us have a look as how TRIZ works by comparing two problems. First problem: how to protect a hydrofoil moving at a high speed from hydraulic cavitation, which results from collapsing air bubbles which destroy the metal surface of the foil? Second problem: how to prevent orange plantations from being eaten by apes if installing fences around the plantations would be too expensive? Are these problems similar? At a first glance, not at all. However from the TRIZ point of view, they are similar, because both the problems result in identical problem patterns. In both cases, there are two components interacting with each other and the result of the interaction is negative. In the first situation, the water destroys the foil, in the second – an ape eats an orange. And there is no visible and simple way to improve the situations. To solve this type of problems, TRIZ recommends introducing a new component between the existing ones. Well, but how? We tried it, and it did not work – fences are still expensive. What did the best inventors do in this case? Analysis of the best inventions showed that this new component has to be a modification of one of the two existing components! In TRIZ, the word “modification” is being understood in broad terms. It can be a change of aggregate state of a substance, or a change of color, structure, etc. What can a modification of the water be? Ice. A refrigerator is installed inside the foil and freezes the water thus forming an ice layer over the foil surface. Now, the cavitations destroy the ice, which is constantly rebuilt. What can be the “modification” of the orange? A lemon! The ape does not like the taste of the lemon so it was proposed to surround the orange plantations with lemon trees. As seen in figure 2, TRIZ suggests recommendations on solving new problems accordingly guidelines drawn from previous experience of tackling similar problems in different areas of technology. Wellknown psychological methods for activation of thinking (brainstorm, for instance) or traditional design methods aim at finding a specific solution to a specific problem. It is difficult – too much information has to be browsed and there is no guarantee that we move in a right direction. TRIZ organizes translation of the specific problem into abstract problem and then proposes to use a generic design principle or a pattern, which is relevant to the type of the problem. As clear, by operating at the level of conceptual models, the search space is significantly reduced that makes it much easier to find the needed solution concept among the patterns TRIZ offers.(Fig.2) International Journal of Engineering Research and General Science Volume 2, Issue 3, April-May 2014 ISSN 2091-2730 234 www.ijergs.org A b s tr a c t p r o b le m A b s tr a c t s o lu tio n P RIN C IP LE S O O F F T R IZ S p e c if ic p r o b le m S p e c if ic s o lu t io n T R I A L S & E R R OR S