Thursday, October 31, 2013
Day 3 ETRIA TFC in Paris: Wow!
The plenary
speaker for day 3 at ETRIA TFC Paris is Professor Serge Tichkiewitch, President
of EMIRAcle (European Manufacturing and Innovation Research Association), who
was introduced by Denis Cavallucci as one of the primary champions for the recognition
of TRIZ in Europe. Prof. Tichkiewitch
spoke on 3 topics
Koichi Makino
presented “A quantifiable evaluation method for generated ideas with
many varieties.” The method is based on
the number and variety of ideas (which is challenged as relevant criteria by
those who want a small number of highly innovative and applicable ideas.)
1.
ResEUr, an online course for development of
entrepreneurs
2.
The
“valley of death” – barriers to acceptance of innovation
3.
Cross
cutting issues for industrial innovation
He concluded with challenges to take advantage of the
publicly supported programs, and to overcome the weaknesses of lack of focus,
emphasis on current technology, and psychological and historical resistance to
risk. The partnerships between
research, government and industry of EMIRAcle are aimed at developing the
strengths of these systems and overcoming the weaknesses.
“TRIZ
education using Pictographs and Music” by Jeongho Shin demonstrated his
approach to finding an engaging starting point for TRIZ for children and adults,
as well as his own entrepreneurial journey from conventional TRIZ in LG to the
music and art world. The clarity of the
simple examples (with design help from his young children to keep the
pictographs meaningful, clear and simple) were impressive. Segmentation—pictograph
cards for adults have words, the ones for kids have charming cartoons. They were tested at the National (Korean)
Science Museum recently with 200 children in 30 minutes sessions—each card stimulated
many inventions! The audience loved
singing Shin’s song of 8 principles!
Pascal Sire
announced a joint venture between KATA and TRIZ France to create new programs
for children. The audience donated 1
euro per pack of cards to support this effort.
We returned to conventional presentation
mode for Manabu Sawaguchi’s approach to TRIZ for risk prevention with new
technologies that have new kinds of risk.
KYK and KYT combine direct observation of the system in work at the
workplace with knowledge from past history of
problems. CRMART is a
complementary method that reverses thinking, asking “how can we create risks?”
in order to reveal vulnerability. This
is an application of principle 13, turning thinking
upside down, to challenge people to find potential risks. The harmful function diagram from value
engineering is then used for generating mitigation plans. (There appear to be some subtle difference
between CRMART and the AFD or Subversion method that has been used in TRIZ in
the past.)
“The Value of TRIZ and Its Derivatives for
Interdisciplinary Problem Solving” is a fascinating project—a large, diverse
group of people were given a half day of TRIZ and USIT training, and another
group got classical creativity training, then placed in small groups and asked to solve
a biological problem (adenovirus attack on children with compromised immune
systems) for which none of them had any technical background, although research
materials on the details of the problem were provided. The multidisciplinary teams with TRIZ
training produced the greatest number of ideas, but the monodisciplinary teams
with conventional training produced the highest rated (by technical experts) idea.
No surprise since practical applicability
was one of the criteria for evaluation. Read this paper—lots of good analysis and
good experimental design in a field where we have only had people’s opinions in
the past.
The team from the host university
presented “TRIZ methodology adapted to hybrid powertrain evaluation.” Analysis of the designs based on
mathematical models of fuel use were compared to evaluation based in the ideal
final result, for traction, vehicle stop and coasting, and regenerative
braking, and the conclusions were used to suggest changes to powertrain
architecture. The method was then applied to 2 different situations
for the urban customer and the highway customer. Next steps will be to use the
TRIZ problem solving methods to design the powertrain defined in these
architecture studies.
“Systematic search and ranking of physical contradictions using graph
theory principles: Toward a systematic analysis of design strategies and their
impacts” by a multi-disciplinary team from Aalto University and Tampere University
and 4 companies (Metso, Solving, Kone Cranes, and the Finnish Defense Forces.) Research problems:
1.
How to improve paper roll cleanness and
minimize energy use
2.
How to diminish energy
consumption of air bearing technology
3.
How to develop
computer supported tools for use in early stage modeling and simulation (effects
of early decisions are usually not seen until late in the design phase)
Hypothesis:
They can integrate computer systems for requirement analysis and search
for contradictions. It became obvious
that they needed language tools to extract contradictions from the natural language
descriptions of the specific problems. The
results of this study are being incorporated into software being developed by a
start-up company being created by former students in the program.
“Measuring the efficiency of
inventive activities along inventive projects in R&D” Ali Taheria, Denis
Cavallucci, David Ogeta included extensive data from over 100 companies on
their experiences with multiple methods in R&D. The project is to create a metric for design
efficiency to compare methods, then to evaluate that metric vs. the opinions of
the designers. Efficiency in time and
cost are much easier to measure than the human aspect of the use of
brain-power. Refinements are expected
in the next phase of the work.
I will not be able to report on the afternoon papers or the membership
meeting, since I’m traveling to the UK for tomorrow’s UK TRIZ Forum—I’ll post a
report on Saturday for that one-day session.
This kind of sequential blog may not capture the spirit of either the
ETRIA or the UK meeting. Hearing the
papers in the words of the authors is useful, but the “gossip” and the
conversations and the fellowship of the meetings cannot be captured in the
papers. Hearing that TRIZ for
children has “escaped” from the TRIZ experts because 100 college teachers have
now taught many schoolteachers who are now teaching systematic methods to
17,000 students in France—WOW! Meetings
in Bavaria of dozens of companies to share innovation concepts (and not just
once, 4 or more a year for multiple years…) Wow! Formation of TRIZCampus, a community of practice—TRIZ
teachers sharing all their methods and materials. Internal TRIZ societies at GE and Phillips
and Siemens…Wow and wow and wow….
Blogger’s advice: Start now to
plan for the time and budget to attend at least one meeting in the next year to
be part of the Wow! Lots of choices:
Iberoamerican
Innovation Congress: November in Mexico
Altshuller
Institute: December on-line
Malaysia in February
China in Spring
Korea and Society of
Systematic Innovation (in the US this year) in July
Japan in September,
And many regional
meetings ranging from TRIZ France and Apeiron (Italy) and Iran and Israel and India to “Pizza, Beer,
and TRIZ” in several cities.
I’ll be glad to host any reports of any of these meetings on this blog.
Comments invited!
Ellen
