Accelerate your innovation using TRIZ
The Problem
A company spent one year solving a problem in developing a new cap for a water bottle with no result. The problem? It is not safe for drivers and bicyclists to use both hands to open a water bottle. Their new water bottle cap has a valve made as a flexible membrane which permits dispensing water by application of suction. It should open easily at suction pressures less than -0.38 psi. However, in normal use - just placing a water bottle in a backpack or a bag - the pressure on the bottle and internal water pressure can be greater than 0.38 psi, causing the valve to leak water. Trying to solve the leakage problem the valve could be made stiffer, however, it would be difficult to drink.
Conflicts and Compromise
It is a typical conflict, where an attempt to improve one function causes deterioration of another function. And a typical solution engineers are taught is an optimization, trade-off or compromise. Conflicts are most difficult problems in innovation. If a compromise is not possible, like in water bottle cap problem, a problem could stay for months, years, and even decades. Even when a compromise is possible, it is not the best solution. A breakthrough solution improves one function without any deterioration of the conflicting functions. Could you afford looking for the best solutions for years or implement not the best possible solution?
Technology you use to solve technical problems is critically important. Brainstorming and brainstorming based methods do not provide any guide, checklist or algorithm to solve any type of problems in innovation, they even do not recognize different types of problems. In practice, they are random idea generation, which is impossible to plan, which are ineffective and inefficient.
Having limited time, no guide to solve problems in innovation, and, as a result, failing to develop breakthrough solutions, engineers select trade-off solutions, fearing that a competitor could have a better result. In addition, project teams are not sure that all problems that are worth solving are revealed and considered.
Efficient Solutions
The water bottle cap manufacturer invited me for three days, however, the problem was solved less than a day and a half. The solution (US Patent No 6,832,706) allows drinking water much more easily that it was originally required while eliminating any possibility of leakage.
It was not a magic at all. It was an application of TRIZ conflict solving algorithm. TRIZ is Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. Genrich S. Altshuller, the creator of TRIZ, studied thousands of the most innovative worldwide patents and discovered that inventors used a the same limited number of typical changes in their respective systems again and again.
He called these changes Inventive Principles. It was at the beginning of 1970th and it was the first step to develop to a practical method to invent. He stopped his development in 1985. The Inventive Principles were replaced with a conflict solving algorithm, was developed a method to model problems in innovation using symbols, offered models of solutions to problems when we need to introduce a new function or to eliminate unwanted function and many more. He discovered that technical systems have the same steps in there development. These steps, called Laws of Evolution of Technical Systems, are reliable base for technology forecasting.
All of this while using laws that even kids could invent from. Seriously! After attending my a week-long summer camp for 9-11 year olds, two US patents were granted to a kid. No wonder that the company seeing that “non-solvable” problem using TRIZ could be solved so fast, requested to teach their engineers right away.
Medical Applications
Each year in the U.S. there are about 1,500 incidents of surgical instruments and sponges being left inside patients after their surgeries resulting in deterioration of the health of the patients or even their deaths. The incidents also financially impact healthcare providers by huge legal and medical cost. There were invented many alternatives to detect sponges using electromagnetic, magnetomechanical and electromechanical detection techniques. It was suggested to use for detection metal tags, magnetic tags, magnestristive tags and even radioactive tracer. There were suggested to use different electronic tags including RFID tags. RFID tags cost well in excess of $0.30 per tag. While this is very small amount of the actual surgical costs, it is nevertheless a significant amount to cause concern among potential users of sponges with cost of $0.10 since about 70 M sponges used in US every year. My application of TRIZ resulted in inventing (US Patent No 7,695,435) less than a cent tag, a reliable and inexpensive solution to the problem known for more than 100 years.
Transportation Applications
“For John Higgs, 767 Tanker Transport former chief project engineer, the five-day TRIZ seminar refocused the thinking about a technical problem that had stumped a crew of top Boeing engineers for three years.” “By applying TRIZ,” says Higgs, the class came up with two complete solutions that my team had never thought of.” “The results, according to Higgs, have put as ahead in our race to reconfigure the 767 into a combined tanker and transport for military use.” (TRIZ: Invention Verses Inertia, ED Wells Initiative Newsletter, September 2000). These solutions helped Boeing not only to save millions of dollars in development but also to win 8 orders with listing price $1,5B.
Advantages of TRIZ
According to Dr. Bradford Goldense, today TRIZ is used in 50 countries.
- TRIZ provides understanding of the inevitable evolution of products
- TRIZ helps develop breakthrough concepts and ideas
- TRIZ helps to solve six classis of problems including contradictions
- TRIZ leads to maximize the resources in order to develop better products at a lower cost
- Less number of people involved and less time needed to develop an innovative solution to a problem
- Estimation of time for each step and the whole process
- Documents step by step the solution process and the Solution Tree
- Increases efficiency and effectiveness of creative work
- Develops winning concepts faster
- TRIZ helps pursue competitive advantage
My experience in teaching TRIZ and solving non-solvable problems for my clients for more than 30 years is the foundation for my continues further development of TRIZ into the most powerful and user friendly version. It includes:.
- Universal steps for formulating an exhaustive set of problems that are worth solving.
- A series of checklists for the generation of breakthrough solutions for each of the 6 classes of problems in innovation including conflict solving algorithm, TRIZ Root Cause Analysis, Harmful Function Elimination, Introduction of a new Function and TRIZ Technology Forecasting.
Take full advantage of TRIZ! Learn more and register today >
Zinovy Royzen is a leading TRIZ consultant, project facilitator, trainer, and TRIZ developer. He is the founder and President of TRIZ Consulting, Inc., the first U.S. company to apply TRIZ, and has worked with many major companies world-wide. Zinovy has transformed the classical TRIZ theory into the most powerful and user-friendly version of modern TRIZ and has taught it to over a thousand engineers.