Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Half title page
Title page
Copyright page
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Part One: TRIZ Logic and the Tools for Innovation and Clarity of Thought
1 TRIZ Tools for Creativity and Clever Solutions
What is TRIZ?
What does TRIZ Offer?
How TRIZ Works
TRIZ Creativity Tools
TRIZ for Everyone – No Matter What Your Creativity
2 TRIZ Knowledge Revolution to Access All the World’s Known Solutions
Problem Solving – Resolving Defined Problems
Problems Vary – Some Are Easy, Some Are Difficult
How to Access Our Own and the World’s Knowledge
Conclusion: TRIZ Access to the World’s Knowledge
3 Fundamentals of TRIZ Problem Solving
What is Problem Solving?
TRIZ Conceptual Solutions
Logic of TRIZ Problem Solving
TRIZ Basic logic – Improving Ideality
Avoiding Premature Solutions – Ask WHY?
Stakeholder Needs and the Ideal
Problem Solving at the Right Price with TRIZ – Use Trimming and Resources
4 Thinking in Time and Scale
Talented Thinking
Inventive Engineers – Thinking in Time and Scale for System Context and All Requirements
Why Use Time and Scale?
Time and Scale Can Be Used in at Least Four Ways
Unidentified Manufacturing Problem – Scrap Rate Rises Dramatically
Use 9-Boxes to Understand History/Context of a Problem
Conclusion: TRIZ Aim is to Increase Ideality and Subdue Complexity
Case Study: Applying Time and Scale to Nuclear Decommissioning Research Sites Restoration Limited – an Estimating Workshop
Part Two: The Contradiction Toolkit
5 Uncovering and Solving Contradictions
Contradictions – Solve or Compromise?
What is a Contradiction?
40 Inventive Principles
What is a Contradiction?
40 Principles Solve All Contradictions
Contradiction Matrix
The 39 Technical Parameters
Using the Matrix
Solving Physical Contradictions
Physical Contradiction Examples
Finding Physical Contradictions
Physical or Technical Contradiction
Summary of Contradictions
Case Study: The Large and the Small of the Measurement of Acoustic Emissions in a Flying Aircraft Wing
Problem: The Measurement of Acoustic Emissions in a Flying Aircraft Wing
Appendix 5.1 40 Principles: Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
1 Segmentation
2 Taking Out or Extraction
3 Local Quality
4 Asymmetry
5 Merging/Consolidation
6 Universality
7 Nested Doll
8 Anti-weight
9 Prior Counteraction
10 Prior Action
11 Cushion in Advance
12 Equipotentiality
13 The Other Way Around
14 Spheroidality Curvature
15 Dynamics
16 Partial or Excessive Actions
17 Another Dimension
18 Mechanical Vibration
19 Periodic Action
20 Continuity of Useful Action
21 Rushing Through
22 Blessing in Disguise
23 Feedback
24 Intermediary/Mediator
25 Self-Service
26 Copying
27 Cheap Short-Living Objects
28 Replace Mechanical System
29 Pneumatics and Hydraulics
30 Flexible Shells & Thin Films
31 Porous Materials
32 Colour Changes
33 Homogeneity
34 Discarding and Recovering
35 Parameter Changes
36 Phase Transitions
37 Thermal Expansion
38 Accelerated Oxidation
39 Inert Atmosphere
40 Composite Materials
Part Three: Fast Thinking with the TRIZ Ideal Outcome
6 The Ideal Solves the Problem
Simple Steps to Fast Resourceful Systematic Problem Solving
System We Want – the Acceptable Ideality
Ideal – Solves the Problem Itself
Define the Ideal – and Then Find the Resources to Create It
Genius, Resources and Ideal Thinking
Ideal Solution/Machine/User Manual to Uncover All Required Functions
Systems – Get the Right System and Get the System Right
Ideal Outcome to Help Us Appropriately Ignore/Subjugate Constraints
Too Much Innovation?
Ideal Outcome to Solve Problems
Ideal and Constraints, Reality and Problem Solutions
Constraints = Restrictions on How We Deliver (Not What We Want/Don’t Want)
The Ideal Helps Test Our Real Constraints
Start with Only Requirements – Initially Forget Both Systems and Constraints
Ideal, Constraints – and the Appropriate Levels of Problem Solving
Conclusion: Ideal Outcome Prompts Us to Understand Requirements and Simultaneously Find Solutions
7 Resources: The Fuel of Innovation
Using Resources – How to Become a Resourceful Engineer
Use the Resources We’ve Got
Locating and Defining Resources
Resources and Make or Buy Decisions
Needs – the Beginning of Any Process – Engineering or Otherwise
Requirements, Solutions and Resources
TRIZ Helps Engineers Balance Ingenuity and Time to Encourage Innovation in Design
Functions = Solutions to Give Us What We Want to Deliver
TRIZ Problem Solving Using Resources
Resource Hunt
TRIZ Triggers Plus Resources for Practical Solutions
The Ideal Solves the Problem Itself – Ideal Self Systems
Ideal Self Systems – Ideal Resources Used to Design a Tomato Sauce Bottle
Best Use of Resources – Overall TRIZ Philosophy
8 Ideal and the Ideality Audit
Ideality Audit
Benefit Capture Exercise
Undertaking an Ideality Audit
No System Yet?
Using the Ideal in Aerospace Problem-Solving Sessions
Thinking Up Solutions is More Fun Than Meeting Needs
Different Stakeholders Have Different Ideal Outcomes
TRIZ Embraces Solution-Mode Thinking
Defining the Ultimate Goal and Prime Benefit
Identifying Real Goals – Owning a Submarine Fleet
Ideal Outcome and Inventing
Using the Ideal to Understand What We Want and Then Achieve It – Windows for Houses and Offices
Conclusion
Part Four: TRIZ, Invention and Next Generation Systems
9 System Development and Trends of Evolution
TRIZ Trends for Finding Future Systems
Perfecting Products
Origin of the TRIZ Trends of Evolution
TRIZ Trends and Lines of Evolution
Evolution – Including Technical
Successful Products Meet Needs
Using the Trends for Practical Problem Solving
The 8 Trends Map Natural Progression and Development
Ideality is Increased by Moving towards the Ideal Along Any or All of the TRIZ Trends
10 Inventing with TRIZ
How to Be a Great but Mundane Inventor with TRIZ
TRIZ and Invention
Product DNA Predicts Future Systems
Development of the Breathalyzer
TRIZ for Invention
Interesting Gaps Between Inspirational Ideas and Scientific Proofs
TRIZ and All Routes to Invention – Creating Systems
TRIZ Helps with All the Major Routes to Invention
Systematic Routes to Invention
Corporate Innovation and Invention is Poorly Rewarded
Part Five: TRIZ for System Analysis and Improvement
11 Function Analysis for System Understanding
Function Analysis and Maps for Problem Understanding
Why Use TRIZ Function Analysis?
What Can TRIZ Function Analysis Reveal at a Glance?
Basic Building Blocks for Problem Solving – Defining Ideality
For Problem Solving We Need Both the Ideality Audit and the Function Analysis
Function Analysis of the Current System (System We’ve Got)
Function Analysis for Understanding and Solving Simple Problems
Systems Develop to Deliver Benefits Better – Perfecting Functions to Deliver Those Benefits
Systems Develop in Response to Changing Needs
Simple Rules of Function Analysis
Function Maps Contain All the System and Relevant Environmental Elements
Problem Solving from the Function Analysis Problem List
Oxford Standard Solutions for Solving Problems Mapped in Function Analysis
Function Analysis at Every Stage and for Every Kind of Difficult Problem
Function Analysis Identifies All Significant Problems
Example of Function Analysis of a Single Item – a Coffee Cup
Function Analysis for Locating and Dealing with the Causes of Problems – Roadside Bombs
Conclusion
Case Study: Improving the Opening of the Bitesize Pouch at Mars
Mars Enjoys Immediate Success of New Pouch Packaging Concept
The Pouch Problem
Solving the Pouch Problem with TRIZ
The Winning Idea and the Validation
Patenting the Idea
The Future
Conclusion
Appendix 11.1 Oxford Standard Solutions These are the Traditional TRIZ 76 Standard Solutions Re-Arranged into Three Categories
Three Categories of Solution
Harms = H
Insufficiency = i
12 Classical TRIZ: Substance-Field Analysis and ARIZ
ARIZ and Substance–Fields in Altshuller’s Development of TRIZ Tools
Substance–Field Analysis
Building Substance–Field Models
76 Standard Solutions and Accessing Them with Substance–Field Models
Simple Steps for Applying Substance–Field Model Analysis to Problems
ARIZ – An Algorithm for Inventive Problem Solving
Overall Structure of the ARIZ Algorithm
Using ARIZ to Solve a Problem with Coal Blocking a Pipe
Conclusion
Appendix 12.1 Traditional TRIZ 76 Standard Solutions
Class 1: Building and Destruction of Su–Field/Substance– Field Models
Class 2 Development of Substance–Field Models
Class 3: System Transitions and Evolution – Transition to Super-system and Sub-system
Class 4: Solutions for Detection and Measurement
Class 5: Extra Helpers
Part Six: How to Problem Solve with TRIZ – the Problem Solving Maps
13 TRIZ Problem-solving Maps and Algorithms
TRIZ for the Right Functions at the Right Time in the Right Places
Where Do We Start with TRIZ? Which Tools When?
TRIZ is Immediately Useful but Understanding Takes Time and Practice
Two Fundamental Areas in Practical Technical Problem Solving
Problem Understanding and Solving Routes and Applying the Ideality Tactics
Case Study BAE Systems ‘SRES’ Ducting Design
Problem Context
System Modelling and Analysis
Final Solution
Summary and Conclusions
Benefits of TRIZ to the BAE Systems Team
Appendix I 39 Parameters of the Contradiction Matrix
Appendix II Contradiction Matrix
Glossary
Index
This edition first published 2011
© 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Registered office
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Gadd, Karen.
TRIZ for engineers : enabling inventive problem solving / Karen Gadd.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-74188-7 (cloth)
1. TRIZ theory. 2. Inventions. 3. Engineering–Methodology. 4. Problem solving–Methodology. I. Title.
T212.G33 2011
620.0028–dc22
2010034198
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN pbk: 9780470741887
ISBN ePDF: 9780470684337
ISBN oBook: 9780470684320
ISBN epub: 9780470975435
I would like to thank the following people for their support and help.
My Managing Director and daughter, Lilly Haines-Gadd, for her unfailing enthusiasm, support, patience and encouragement.
My colleagues who have worked with me to create the simple approaches to TRIZ in this book – we have all learned from each other and I am grateful for all they have taught me – most especially Henry Strickland, Andrew Martin, Andrea Mica.
All those who have helped me put my ideas and TRIZ solutions into a form to communicate it to others. Merryn Haines-Gadd, our graphic designer, who turns my thoughts into pictures, and Eric Willner and Nicky Skinner of Wiley for their help, optimism and common sense advice and Caroline Davies of Oxford Creativity.
Our whole TRIZ community and all those who learned TRIZ from me and my colleagues, and who have joined us in our quest to make TRIZ accessible within their organisations and beyond, especially:
Frédéric Mathis (Mars), Ric Parker (Rolls-Royce), Dave Knott (Rolls-Royce), Pauline Marsh (BAE Systems), Simon Brodie (RAF) Mike West (Babcock), and Professor Derek Sheldon (Institution of Mechanical Engineers).
Those who have worked to bring TRIZ to the world and first introduced me to the power of its toolkit, most especially, Ellen Domb and Sergei Ikovenko.
My thanks to all the engineers who have taught me, inspired me and worked with me to solve problems with TRIZ. To all the TRIZ teams of engineers we have worked with (but we cannot name for security reasons) whose clever ideas during TRIZ sessions helped us to extend and develop our TRIZ thinking.
My own family of engineers: my father Kenneth Gadd who claims that as an old engineer (contemporary, but unknowing of Altshuller) he represents a generation whose engineering prowess was unmatched by any previous or succeeding generations. All my fellow Imperial College engineers, including my husband Geoff Haines (a middle-aged engineer) and to my son Jonathan Haines-Gadd (a young engineer), and those few members of my family who don’t yet work with TRIZ but who have supported me in my championship for such challenging causes – my mother Kathleen Gadd, my daughter Rebecca Haines-Gadd and my TRIZniks of the future, my grandchildren Isobelle, Livia and Freddie.
Most especially, the great Genrich Altshuller – my gratitude and respect for his extraordinary vision to uncover and summarise the world’s engineering genius grows with all the TRIZ work I undertake. I have returned to his source material at every stage of my learning, and I strive to merely interpret the power and logic of his TRIZ.
This is what I offer with this book, faithfulness to Altshuller’s TRIZ tools and I hope simple, clear innovative ways for understanding and using them. TRIZ requires both right (creative) and left (logical and systematic) sides of the brain to make it work. The only known way to join these two is with laugher and humour and the TRIZ cartoons attempt to achieve this. I have been assisted in this by the wonderful cartoonist Clive Goddard, who has worked with me to create TRIZ cartoons to help show just how much fun TRIZ offers. I hope we have succeeded.
Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch = Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
TRIZ is an engineering problem solving toolkit which successfully summarizes past solutions and successes to show us how to systematically solve future problems. TRIZ comes from Russia, initially and primarily the work of Genrich Altshuller, a great engineer and inventor, perhaps one of the greatest engineers of the twentieth century, whose work helps all other engineers. All good engineers live with both uncertainty and certainty – uncertainty about where to find the solution to the next problem and certainty that a solution will be found. TRIZ enhances and speeds up this process by directing us to the places full of good solutions to our particular problems. TRIZ focuses our problem understanding to the particular, relevant problem model and then offers conceptual solutions to that model. Good engineers reduce wasted time with TRIZ as they head straight for the valid solutions and use their valuable time to define their problem accurately, find all the solutions to that problem and then develop those solutions. TRIZ and other toolkits help in all these various stages of problem understanding but only TRIZ helps in the solution locating stage. The best engineers enjoy complex problem solving and finding new, better innovative solutions – TRIZ enhances their abilities as innovators and just trims out the wasted empty trials and dead ends. TRIZ keeps engineers doing what they do best – solving problems – and takes away nothing but time wasting, brain deadening, complex and irrelevant detail. TRIZ helps engineers power forward to useful and practical answers.
TRIZ is a toolkit – each tool is simple to use, and between them they cover all aspects of problem understanding and solving. The only challenge with TRIZ is learning which tool to use when, and this comes with practice and familiarity. Complete TRIZ algorithms are hard to master, as they set out to cover all problem situations, and are about as useful as an algorithm to help you complete 18 holes in golf. This book takes you through each TRIZ tool in turn and suggests when and where to use them, and offers some simple problem solving flowcharts for each tool. Once each TRIZ tool is mastered, it will become part of your problem solving tool; some you will use everyday and some just occasionally, but they are all useful for engineering problems, and are great thinking tools to help good engineers become great engineers.
In Russian TRIZ is written as above. TRIZ became known and available outside Russia after 1993, although there were some occasional TRIZ activities before that in some Western companies. In the USA there was some resistance to a Russian technique with a strange acronym name, which to most people was incomprehensible and unpronounceable. Some attempts were made to anglicise and rename it as TIPS (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) – this was not widely adopted and in the USA TRIZ is now pronounced as TREES and in Europe TRIZZZZ.
At my first Altshuller conference in California I was surprised that there seemed to be three TRIZ camps: the Russian, the American and the European, and they didn’t seem to be mixing much. (There are now other powerful camps from Korea and Japan). I called my paper TIPSY TRIZ and talked about the western TIPS acronym representing the resistance to Russian thoroughness, the temptation to oversimplify TRIZ in order to gain acceptance and to break down the initial resistance to this rigorous toolkit. I talked about the UK TRIZ serious successes with major engineering companies, and the TRIZ impact on UK engineering, but at the end I made jokes about trying to problem-solve whilst under the influence of vodka – only the Europeans laughed, the Americans viewed me with disapproval, and the Russians with incomprehension. The paper was mostly about overcoming the difficulties of selling an unknown but brilliant Russian process to Western companies who initially view it with weariness and suspicion, but once familiar with TRIZ are almost always smitten, embrace it with enthusiasm, and how company experts in other toolkits always argue that TRIZ is like ….. and name their favourites. Persuading them that TRIZ is unlike any other toolkit, but complimentary to the others, first involves getting them to use TRIZ to successfully solve problems. This demonstrates that TRIZ covers the parts that no other toolkits even attempt – and that TRIZ is a toolkit for moving from vague problem to defined problem, and then to locating relevant conceptual solutions distilled from all of science and engineering – and that no other toolkit comes close.
I was telling dispiriting stories of how despite its unique power, how hard it can be to sell TRIZ to European companies, and then (I hoped) the more cheering tale of how Oxford Creativity used TRIZ to overcome the problems of getting engineers and engineering communities to adopt TRIZ in the UK. In particular I described our spectacular success in taking TRIZ to Rolls-Royce and the effect of our TRIZ training and problem solving with many hundreds of their engineers. Getting Rolls-Royce to adopt TRIZ took over three years and its introduction was due to TRIZ being initially championed by their R&T director Ric Parker assisted by Dave Knott – a rare prior TRIZ convert earlier, as he had heard a TRIZ lecture some years before and written his most successful patent the next day. With Ric and Dave’s help and enthusiasm we overcame the inertia and hostility and TRIZ has been one of their core competence tools since 2000. Since then our other successes have included BAE Systems where even the most experienced and curmudgeonly engineers can be turned around to energetic enthusiasm.
I have always been amazed that, until some small understanding is established, how strong the resistance and inertia to TRIZ can be at a corporate and personal level. This is despite its huge value to engineers, its documented successes, and once accepted and learned, its transforming power on even the most plodding of engineers to think clearly and problem-solve innovatively, quickly and effectively.
Recently whilst teaching a seminar at a college in Oxford University to six technical directors of an international engineering company, we asked them why they had been considering TRIZ with us since 1999 yet ten years later were cautiously allowing themselves a one-day seminar. “We thought TRIZ was either too trivial or too complex for us” came the answer from these clever engineers: all were in desperate need of new solutions, new products and greater understanding of future technologies. After the one day they said TRIZ switched the lights on for them in an area of new technology, where before they had been groping around each equipped with the relatively small torch of their own knowledge and ideas. They have since all learned TRIZ and are working to establish it throughout the company.
The TRIZ tools were developed in Russia by engineers for engineers with thousands of man-years of work (and many women-years). Russia 30-50 years ago was a very different culture to our own and time was not of the essence for them and to learn TRIZ the Russian way was, and is, rigorous, requires great application of thought, with lots of worked examples and at least three months is recommended. This is not practical in Europe today and together with other TRIZ users I have endeavoured to create TRIZ Workshops which do not compromise the thoroughness or rigour of TRIZ but will give an understanding of the best TRIZ tools in days, rather than months.
We have also used TRIZ to solve the essential contradiction of learning TRIZ – how to teach a powerful, set of problem solving tools to engineers and managers who are hard pressed to spare the time. We explain the TRIZ tools and show how to use them after each workshop on their own problems; back at work there needs to be sufficient time and practical application for TRIZ to become useful and effective for problem solving for individuals and teams. Enough experience, and even some small successes in the real world, as well as solving big problems that matter, and it will become second nature. TRIZ is very much about analogous thinking, so learning TRIZ is a bit like learning to swim or to drive – once we have been taught and have some confidence, to master it and really do it on our own we need to practise and build the skills and confidence to succeed. Then we know we are able to do it again and better – success and improvement will depend entirely on actually doing it … as often as possible. Nobody will commit to TRIZ until they understand and experience the power and speed of TRIZ to solve problems which will help ensure their company’s future – but once committed to using TRIZ every hour invested in TRIZ will repay many dividends for you for ever.
It has been my privilege to teach (with my colleagues in Oxford Creativity) many thousands of really good and clever engineers in the last thirteen years. Almost all engineers seem to me to be very nice and trustworthy people (mostly men in the UK), with many virtues, including hard work, an appetite for understanding everything about the problem from the big picture to the relevant detail, responsible attitudes, a passion for good solutions, a genuine mistrust of trivia or flash quick answers, good humour and a genuine sense of humility.
All of us at OC teach TRIZ in our very different styles and with as much fun as possible. Despite a reputation for full days, hard work and light heartedness, TRIZ classes are acknowledged as enjoyable, useful if exhausting experiences and we hope delegates leave with a great deal to think about and practice. We teach TRIZ in two bites; two days learning the essential TRIZ tools, followed by two days on the TRIZ problem solving process. Over 95% of delegates sign up for the second course, which is encouraging.
This book is a result of thirteen years problem solving, teaching, (and learning) TRIZ. I offer this book in the same spirit as an apprentice had to offer a ‘masterpiece’ in the hope that he / she could now enter the ranks of their trade accepted by their masters. I hope I offer it in a spirit of humility and I do not offer my way of making TRIZ because I have left TRIZ mostly unchanged, but worked to reveal its simple and powerful logic, assisted by flow charts, pictures cartoons and even jokes.
However I have made one significant new approach and offer two routes for System Analysis – the traditional TRIZ Substance Field Analysis and the five classes of the 76 Standard Solutions and a simpler alternative used by elements of the TRIZ community of Function Analysis and three simple categories of 76 Standard Solutions – how to deal with harm, how to deal with insufficiency and how to detect/ measure something. I have taught both in major companies but have only used the second, easier system for many years.
I feel passionately that TRIZ should now be communicated clearly and simply without losing any of its rigour; made simple and straightforward but never, I hope, made trivial. I have always encouraged jokes, fun and laughter when learning and using TRIZ as it seems to make everyone more creative. I was pleased to see that scientific research has shown that the only way to become truly creative in scientific and engineering problem solving is by joining the left side of the brain (alleged to be systematic) with the right side of the brain (alleged to be creative). To make the right side of our brain join up with our left side we have to laugh and see the fun in situations.*
As in our classes I offer TRIZ tools with jokes and (I hope) humorous stories – not to make light of TRIZ but because I believe this research, which claims the importance and power of humour. I am a great believer in keeping as much fun and enjoyment in life as possible. I hope the cartoons I have commissioned from the wonderful Clive Goddard and the jokes I use here do not offend – I have a very English sense of humour.
Accompanying this book is a website (www.triz4engineers.com) that contains additional material and case studies. There are expanded versions of the 40 Principles and the Oxford Standard Solutions and an Effects database and links to other versions of the TRIZ effects. This website invites TRIZ engineers to contribute their own successes with TRIZ – including case studies – and an opportunity to share problem solving with other engineers.
Note
* W. Wayt Gibbs, Side Splitting, Scientific American, January 2001.