Page top	Agenda	Overview	(A) Promotion of TRIZ	(B) TRIZ Methods in Technology	(C) Case Studies	(D) Business & Management	Concluding
List of Papers	TRIZCON2004 Report	ETRIA TFC 2004 Report	Altshuller Insittute	Nakagawa's Paper (1) SE & TRIZ	Nakagawa's Paper (2) Overall Structure		Japanese page

  Conference Name: TRIZCON2004: The 7th Annual Conference of the Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies
   Date:               April 17-19, 2005
  Place:                 Delphi Technical Center, Brighton (near Detroit), MI, USA
  Held by:             Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies, Inc.  (USA)
  Supported by:   DELPHI
  Participants:    about 150 people (including about 70 from DELPHI)

  Outline of the Agenda:  Tutorial: 3 tracks from 8:00 to 17:00 on April 17 (Sunday)
                                  Symposium:  1 Keynote Speech and 2 Panel Discussion at plenary sessions, 24 presentations in double tracks, from 8:30 through 18:30 on April 18 (Monday) and April 19 (Tuesday).

Agenda:   (In the order of actual presentation.  The number in [  ] stands for the paper number in the Proceedings (or handouts).  See the table of contents of the Proceedings at the bottom of this report. *: attended at by Nakagawa. )

   Tutorial

Apr. 17    (Sun.)   Morning	Introduction to TRIZ    Ellen Domb and    Jack Hipple	Revealin the Causes Failure Using TRIZ   Zinovy Royzen	Intoduction to TRIZ    (in Spanish)    Noel Leon
		Alternative Systems Design   Sergei Ikovenko
Afternoon		Algorithm for Inventive Problem Solving   Victor Fey

  Symposium  

 Overview:

     This is the 7th TRIZ Conference annually held by the Altshuller Institute.  The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies is a not-for-profit organization established in USA in 1998 for wider promotion of TRIZ in the Western world (See its Web site: http://www.aitriz.org/ ).  The Conference, named TRIZCON, has been held at different cities: Novi (near Detroit) in 1999 , Nashua (near Boston) in 2000, Woodland Hills (near Los Angeles) in 2001, St. Louis in 2002, Philadelphia in 2003 , Seattle in 2004, and in Brighton (near Detroit) this year.  Details of the organizing work was carried mostly by Mr. Richard Langevin, Executive Director of the Institute.

     The total number of participants was announced to be about 80 plus 70 from Delphi, the principal supporter of this conference.  Participants came from USA and various other countries over the world including UK, Germany, France, Austria, Israel, Mexico, Korea, Japan, and P.R. China (cf. the list of participants does not show the countries).  Delphi supported the conference by providing with their auditorium and meeting rooms etc. and utilized the conference pro-actively for promoting TRIZ in their company by sending many engineers in the tutorials and symposiums and by Web casting the conference to their several sites including one in Mexico.

     On the first day, Tutorial sessions were held in three parallel tracks, one for introductory, another for introductory especially in Spanish with Web-casting to Mexico, and the third for advanced topics.  About 100 people attended at these tutorials.  This year I attended at Ellen Domb's introductory class; she conducted group practices several times including her famous training of "Find resources to survive at the Titanic accident".  These tutorials must be helpful for the participants to learn the basic concepts of TRIZ  and some  advanced topics of TRIZ from masters of TRIZ. 

     The second and the third days are for Symposium.  The schedule was similar to the previous ones.  Keynote speech and two Panel Discussions were scheduled for 90 minutes in plenary sessions, while ordinary presentations for 60 minutes in two-track parallel sessions.  Most sessions finished about 10 minutes earlier than the time table, giving much time for private discussions.

     The Proceedingswas given to the participants in a CD-R disk, starting this year.  It was handy to carry back to Japan but not good to read during the conference.  Thus during the conference I had to consult my print of the abstracts downloaded from the Web.  The Proceedings contain 28 papers as listed at the bottom of this report (4 papers of them were not presented orally).  Keynote Speech and Panel Discussions did not provide any printed material.  Altshuller Institute's Journal "Izobretenia", Vol. 6, was also published and contained in the CD-R disk.

     Topics of the presentations cover a wide range, while the sessions seem not arranged in any clear categorization.  In this report I am going to group them in the following categories:
     (A) Promotion of TRIZ in Industries and in Academia
     (B) Methods of Applying TRIZ to Technology Problems
     (C) Case Studies of Solving Technical Problems in TRIZ
     (D) Application of TRIZ to Business, Management, and Human Problems 

     Keynote Speech and Pannel Discussions were important sessions, of course, but since no printed materials were provided and since I could not take notes of them, I would like to omit them in this report.  It should be nice if some official record of them is posted somewhere else. 

     I am now going to review almost all the papers below.  However, since I attended only half of  the presentations (due to the parallel sessions) and read all the papers only after the conference, please pardon me if I do not understand some of them in their heart.   [P.S. Only half of the papers are actually described here closely.  (T.N., May 31, 2005)] I am grateful to the Altshuller Insititute and to the authors who have given me the permissions of quoting their figures here.

   
(A) Promotion of TRIZ in Industries and in Academia

   How to promote TRIZ successfully in industries and in academia is an important issue of TRIZCON this year, as well as for these several years.  The Keynote Speech [A] has presented the approach and experiences in Delphi, and the Panel Discussions [B, D] have shown various approaches and trials related to this issue. 

   Len Kaplan (OutCompete, USA) [14] has shown a thoughtful presentation with the title of "Three Main Flops of TRIZ -- And How to Avoid Them".   From his experiences of 15 years of TRIZ consulting, he discusses about strengths and weaknesses of TRIZ in three faces, i.e. TRIZ as method, TRIZ as consultancy, and TRIZ as business.  He argues that the following three points, which are usually supposed to be the strength of TRIZ, are the main flops (i.e. weak and bad points) in TRIZ:

• Assumption that the "root cause contradiction" should be discovered and resolved (TRIZ as a method)
• Intent to break clients' psychological inertia (TRIZ as a consultancy)
• Positioning as "technological problem-solving approach" (TRIZ as a business)

   In relation to the first point, he argues that Altshuller's initial intention of finding 'how to invent' has already shifted in TRIZ to 'how to solve problems' and that 'inventiveness' is usually not the most important criteria for a good solution to a real problem.  In real problems, there are cases where no root contradictions are localized, e.g. cost reduction problems and new system/process development problems.  Thus if the request to discover and solve the "root cause contradiction" is stressed, it hurts the applicability of the TRIZ method to real problem solving.  Hence Kaplan proposed to reconsider this methodological "corner stone" and replace it with another one, more suitable (though the new one is not stated explicitly). 

   In conclusion, Kaplan states the following "Manifesto":

   Kaplan then suggests a new, more reasonalbe set of assumptions.  One of them states as:

The purpose of addressin the challenge (problem) is "to impove the client's situation" rather than "to get rid of the problem" or "to invent".

   Praveen Gupta and Shan Shanmugham (Quality Technology Co., USA) [3] talked with the title of "Institutionalizing Innovation".   Their main message is that effective use of TRIZ requires infrastructural support and commitment to innovation.  One interesting point in their paper is the following conceptual equations, regardless of its logical foundation and effectiveness:

Innovation value  =  Resources  *  (Speed of thoughts)²
Speed of thoughts  =  Function (Knowledge,  Play,  Imagination).   

   Richard Platt (Intel, Israel) [24] has presented a talk on "Enabling Innovation in the Corporate Environment: Champions, Results and Infrastructure". 

   Joseph P. Cool (Cool & Associates, USA) [35] talked on "Marketing TRIZ in the Global Marketplace: A Primer".

   There are four papers related to the promotion of TRIZ in education of engineers and engineerign students.  It is remarkable that all of them came from Korea and China. 

   Kyeong-Won Lee (Korea Polytechnic University, Korea) [36] has presented with the title of " TRIZ Education at Universities in Korea and Their Activities for Expanding Mutual Cooeration with TRIZ Team at Big Companies in Korea".  Since I had a prior chance of listening to his presentation on the same topic in Tokyo on Feb. 24-25, 2005, I chose the other track to attend at.  It is remarkable that his two excellent case studies are the results of his university classes; they are 'Super-water saving toilet' (see TRIZ Journal (Nov. 2003) and TRIZ HP Japan) and 'New mosquito traps' (See ETRIA TFC2004 ). 

   Zhao Xinjun (Northeasten University, P.R. China) [4] contributed a paper "Research and Development on TRIZ in China ".  See his article in this Web site  TRIZ HP Japan, Nov. 2004 .

   Minyi Zhang (IWINT Inc., P.R. China) and Zhanwen Niu (Tianjin University, P.R. China) [22] has given a presentation on " Successful TRIZ Education Experience in University".   This paper describes two  simple but interesting case studies done by students at Tianjin University. 

(B) Methods of Applying TRIZ to Technology Problems

    Improving the TRIZ methodology itself is certainly an important issue in the TRIZ conferences.  This year, the paper by Zlotin and Zusman on the concept of Resources reflects their decades long study of TRIZ.  There are several other works which try to integrate other methods such as Value Engineering, Lean Engineering, EMS Modeling, Case-Based Reasoning, Artificial Intelligence, and Software Engineering. The paper by the present author on the overall structure of TRIZ is supposed to have special significance to understand the  framework of creative problem solving in general.

   Boris Zlotin and Alla Zusman (Ideation International Inc., USA) have been publishing imortant papers  reflecting their decades-long study on various aspects of TRIZ.  This year they have presented a paper [20] with the title "The Concept of Resources in TRIZ: Past, Present and Future".   Their paper (having 60 pages in total) consists of three parts, i.e. Theoretical Findings (related to the concept of resources), Practical Instruments (showing the details of the findings), and Appendix.  Study of TRIZ has extended the concept of Resources wider and wider, so as to include the terms like 'Readily-available resources', 'Derived resources', 'Evolutionary resources'.  Zlotin and Zusman define a Pattern of Evolution: "Evolution towards the increased involvement of resources"; this means that Technical Systems in general have been found to evolve (or historically develop) towards the increased involvement of resources. 

   The following figure (i.e. Fig. 4 of [20])  illustrates that the effective use of various types of resources is the key to develop a technical system toward ideality.  Unfortunately, however, the present author feels that this figure wants to show too many things in an confusing way; e.g. the acronym 'FFIISSTT' obscures the structure of the concept of Resources.

   Summarizing Zlotin and Zusman [20], their 'resource checklist' seems to be structured in the following way:

   Although (or because) Zlotin and Zusman's paper [20] is so extensive and intensive, it is not easy for me to understand their present concept of Resources; maybe I should read their paper again more closely. 

   Peter Hanik, Vladimir Proseanic, and Svetlana Visnepolschi (Ideation International Inc., USA) (Quality Process Consulting, USA) [28] have presented a paper with the title of  "Integration of Value Engineering with TRIZ through FAST Diagrams."   In short, the authors propse to use the Problem Formulator tool of Ideation International's TRIZ methodology in the idea generation with VE.   Their case study of a Stapler Remover is not so attractive unfortunately.

   John Boza and Rick Gour(TRW Automotive, USA) [29] contributed  a paper "Combining Value Engineering and TRIZ in the Automotive Industry."  Their document in the slide style, without actual presentation, is difficult to comprehend how they really use TRIZ.

   Steven Ungvari (Institute for Lean Design, USA) [32] has presented another important paper with the title "Lean/TRIZ:  Eliminating Waste in Product Development through Innovation".  Lean Engineering was originally developed in Toyota Motor Co., Japan, with the notion of efficiency especially in the form of lack of waste and wasteful processes.  It has been introduced in the US industries for over a decade.  Ungvari has presented a general scheme (Lean/TRIZ) of combining TRIZ with Lean so as to eliminate the lifecycle waste with the 'latent' innovation capability of TRIZ especially at the design stage. 

   Ungvari adapted the TRIZ concept of Ideality into 'Universal Lean Design Equation' in Lean/TRIZ.  The Lean/TRIZ Idealty has the 'Customer values' as the numerator while the 'Evil Ings' (i.e. lifecycle engineering costs) as the denominator.  In developing a new product or service, the development team should try to increase the 'customer values', which may be represented with the following eight factors:

'Customer Ilities':  Performability, Affordability, Featurability, Deliverability, Useability, Maintainability, Durability, and Imageability
(Ungvari notices that there are also the 'company values' which may be represented by the following eight factors:
'Company Ilities':  Profitability, Investability, Riskability, Produceability, Marketability, Growability, Leverageability, and Respectability

There are often conflicts among the Customer Ilities and the Company Ilities; the development team has to foresee and solve such conflicts.  Ungvari call them 'minor/moderate conflicts' in the paper, in order to address the 'major conflicts' between the Customer/company values and the lifecycle engineering costs.)

   As the denominator of the Lean/TRIZ Ideality, Ungvari has chosen 'Evil Ings', where 'Ings' mean subsequent tasks that have to ocur as a result of the design process, e.g. cutting, shaping, welding, boring, storing, inventorying, moving, counting, disposing, etc.  Parts of those Evil Ings may be detectable through 'Activity Based Accounting' but larger parts of them are hidden.  For reducing the impact of 'Evil Ings', Ungvari points out the importance of understanding their root causes.  He suggests seven root causes of bad designs resulting in lifecycle waste.  They are:
      'Root Causes of Evil Ings':  Complex, Precise, Variable, Sensitive, Immature, Dangerous, and Skill Intensive.

   Thus the major challenges for the development team are now clearly defined in the following figure (Fig. 4 of [32]):

   Then Ungvari further goes on to discuss how to do Lean/TRIZ in the four lifecycle domains of a product, i.e. Customer Domai, Design Domain, Supply Domain, and Manufacture Domain.  He shows the 'Five Laws of Lean/TRIZ Design' as the guideline for the design process.  For setting up the design strategy, he proposes a method named 'Lean/TRIZ Design Strategy Mapping', which is based on the strategy of 'Start with the end in mind'. -- I am much interested in the way the author, Steven Ungvari, has shown the major challenges for product development.  The spirits of TRIZ and Lean Engineering are nicely combined to show universal challenges for innovation.   

   Madara Ogot (Pennsylvania State University, USA) [25] has given a presentation with the title of "Use of EMS Models to Enable the Effective Use of TRIZ System Operators in Engineering Design".  He has demonstrated how to draw EMS (Energy-Material-Signal) Models within the 9-windows in TRIZ.   It is not  clear how effective/useful it is.

    Guillermo Cortes Robles, Stephane Negny , Jean-Marc Le Lann, and Pascale Zarate (ENSIACET, Toulouse, France) [16] have presented their work on "Innovation Management and Knowledge Management in Process and Industrial Systems Engineering: TRIZ and Case-Based Reasoning".  This is an extension of their ETRIA TFC2004 paper (see my Personal Report ). 

   Mehdi Akbari (Islamic Azad University of Khomeini Shahr, Iran) [7] contributed a paper on "TRIZ Oriented Artificial Intelligence".   A rough idea is described, but  seems not feasible. 

   Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Japan) [8] contributed a paper with the title of "Software Engineering and TRIZ (1) Structured Programming Reviewed with TRIZ". [Reposted in the "TRIZ Home Page in Japan", Jun. 14, 2005 ]  In this series of papers, I have chosen major topics in software engineering one by one, and reviewed them with TRIZ and fed back principles in software enginnering to TRIZ. Its abstract writes as:

The concept of Structured Programming was examined in this paper. When we see the historical disputes on the "Goto-less" issue from the TRIZ' viewpoint of contradictions, we have found it not appropriate to teach: "the Structured Programming is a proposal to use only three basic control constructs and no Gotos, and it is a compromise with practice to add four more constructs" (as is often taught in computer science classes). It is because only with these additions Structured Programming has its sound bases. On the other hand, the approach of Structured Programming urges TRIZ especially in the following points: (a) TRIZ Principe 1 (Segmentation) should be extended to reflect the idea of Stepwise Refinement; (b) TRIZ Principle 6 (Universality) should be extended to include the idea of establishing/using industrial standards (this has been a blind point of TRIZ due to so much stress on inventions); (c) TRIZ Principle 7 (Nesting) should be regarded more important as reflecting the hierarchy concept of systems.

   Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Japan) [31] has presented with the title of "Overall Dataflow Structure for Creative Problem Solving in TRIZ/USIT".  [This paper is posted in TRIZ Journal, May  2005 and in the "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"].  This paper was presented orally by the present author in place of the first paper [8] because of its importance.

I have written this paper as an argument against Victor Fey's keynote speech at the ETRIA TFC2004. Victor Fey, one of the TRIZ Masters, talked in his Keynote Speech entitled with "Why Does TRIZ Fly But Not Soar?" as: "The reason for the slow penetration of TRIZ lies in the problem in the ways of distribution of TRIZ and not in TRIZ itself. Trials of simplifying TRIZ, such as done in ASIT and USIT, decrease the power of TRIZ. Don't touch TRIZ!" (See my "Personal Report of ETRIA TFC2004" )

The present author claims the following points as the conclusion in this paper.

• TRIZ contains a major problem that its overall procedure is complex and not well unified; and its root cause underlies in the situation that the overall structure of TRIZ is not well representable in the dataflow scheme.
• The whole body of TRIZ has been reorganized and unified into USIT. USIT is much easier to learn and yet powerful and effective for applying it to real problems.
• The new overall structure established in USIT urges us a paradigm shift in the creative problem solving methodology.

Let me explain briefly: It is a basic understanding in TRIZ and in major scientific/technological theories that the following Four-Box Scheme should be used in problem solving. But the scheme is very often modified as shown in the right figure, where a model is chosen first and then the mapping (or abstraction) is done depending on the model. Individual methods in TRIZ may be shown in the right fugure but the whole structure is not well written in the four box scheme.

On the other hand, USIT provides an overall structure as clearly shown in the following Six-Box Scheme. All the essential information needed/derived in each stage is shown in the boxes. If you combine the boxes as enclosed in broken lines, you may find closer relation to the original Four-Box Scheme. It is remarkable that generized problem comes not from models in the textbooks but derived solely from the user's problem with the standard analysis method in USIT. The jumps for obtaining pieces of essential ideas for solutions are assisted by the USIT Operators, a system of symple operators reorganized form TRIZ methods. We do not depend on the ambiguous process of analogical thinking.

At the presentation session and afterwards there were a number of serious and encouraging discussions. Please refer to the paper posted in this Web site ].

   Noel Leon, Jose Jesus Martinez, and Carlos Castillo (Tec de Monterrey, ITESM, Mexico) [15] have presented on "Methodology for the Evaluation of the Innovation Level of Products and Processes (in the TECNOS Award Context)."  They are trying to find  a scheme of non-subjective criteria for giving award  to innovative products and processes in a country scale.  A scheme was presented and tested.  It should be noticed that  such an evaluation scheme may be necessary in enterprises but rather different from the one in the context of a public award. 

(C) Case Studies of Solving Technicla Problems in TRIZ

   This year we had several presentations of case studies in technical problem solving.  It is usual that companies do not want to report any technical details, but here are some exceptional cases containing details of technical thinking process and technical solutions.  We should make the best use of them to learn the good practice of applying TRIZ and the way of thinking in TRIZ. 

 
    Young-Ju Kang, Young-Il Kwon, Pyeong-Kwan Chung, and Alexander Skuratovich (LG Cable, Korea)  [5]  presented a paper with the title of "TRIZ Applications in LG Cable and Case Studies".   The case deals with heat-shrinkable tube to be used for insulating wire connection area.  The heat-shrinkable tube has been produced by introducing a rubber tube heated over 200 °C into the expansion equipment shown in Fig. 1.  The tube is expanded by use of vacuum and then cooled rapidly by water; and hence obtain some shape-memory effect.  The problem of the current product is its inhomogeneous property in the longitudinal shrinking factor.

   The TRIZ team analyzed this problem and found a physical contradiction: the tube must be hot to expand (in the diameter) and yet must be cool not to elongate.  (The TRIZ team had an experience of a similar physical contradiction in the problem of pressing a hot metal plate while avoiding oxidation.  So they introduced the experience, they say.)  They found the operting zone to be the surface of the tube, and the operating time to be 0.01 sec.  They obtained the idea of cooling the surface only of the tube very rapidly so as to make the hardened skin to resist the friction between the tube and the expansion equipment.  The final solution is demonstrated in the figure.  Peltier cooler is applied at the entrance part of the expansion equipment in order to get rapid cooling performance.  This solution reduced the fluctuation in the longitudinal shrinking. 

   LG Cable company, in Korea, has introduced TRIZ since 2001, and has been promoting actively especially since 2003 by inviting a Russian TRIZ expert.  Depending on the importance of the project, TRIZ team either just supports the engineering team, or works together with the engineering team, or even works together with the engineering and patent teams.  16 projects have been solved with TRIZ since 2003, the paper says. 

    Valery Krasnoslobodtsev, Ju-Young Lee, and Jeong-Bae Lee (Samsung Electronics, Korea)[34] has presented an excellent and detailed case study, with the title: "TRIZ Improvement of Rotary Compressor Design".  Krasnoslobodtsev has over 20 years of experiences in TRIZ, as Associate Professor at St. Petersberg State University, etc.  He worked at Samsung during 2001-2004 as an invited TRIZ expert and achieved this case study together with Korean colleagues. 

   The system they worked for improvement is a compressor to be used for air conditioners, refrigerators, etc.  The Rotary Compressor has two cylinders to be operated alternatively for high/low powers, for the purpose of saving energy.  There are two rollers for compressing air in the cylinders and a cam bush controls the clearances between the roller and the cylinder, so as to make a small clearance for the working cylinder while a large clearance for the idling cylinder.  The cam bush is designed to have two working positions, for making the upper/lower cylinder to work (and the other cylinder idle).  Depending on the direction of the compressor-shaft rotation, a driving pin attached to the shaft pushes the cam bush toward one of the two working positions and also drives the rollers. Thus, by reversing the rotation the compressor power can be interchanged.  The problem of the current system is that the driving pin makes noise under some operational conditions because the driving pin pushes the cam bush (and hence the roller) not in a constant force during the compression cycle.  This noise causes some inreliability of the compressor.

   The problem was analyzed with ARIZ.  Functional modeling, Su-Field modeling, Technical Contradiction, Resource anlysis, Ideal  Final Result, and Physical Contradiction, etc. were derived.  And various solutions have been obtained.  The solutions were generated by the TRIZ experts and shown to the engineering team one by one (Krasnoslobodtsev talked that this sequential presentation was the secret of success in encouraging the engineering team to get interested in TRIZ).  21 solutions were obtained and presented in the slides. 

   The first solution (Fig. 8 of [34]) is to introduce a latching mechanism in the driving pin, as shown in the following figure.  The driving pin (now called a multifunctional pin) has a movable part, which serves as a latch for fixing the pin at the working position of the cam bush by the effect of the centrifugal force of the shaft rotation.  When reversing the shaft rotation, since there is no centrifugal force, the movable part is pushed inside the shaft due to the spring force. 

   Another solution (Fig. 9 of [34]) is to introduce a fixative pin at the opposite position to the driving pin.  The fixative pin works to fix the cam bush by virtue of the centrifugal force only during the rotational operation.  This idea of a fixative pin may be modified into various types of stoppers, such as a small disk supported by a flat spring board, a ball (as a stopper) inside a groove, a specially-profiled stopper inside a groove, a roller stopper inside a groove, etc.  The fixative pin may be set on the cam bush (instead on the shaft), as a reverse design.

   Another series of solutions are to introducing asymmetry in the setting of the blade for smoother operation in the compression cycle and also to introduce multiple blades around the circumference of the cylinder for more averaged output pressure of the compressor.  The multiple blades solutions seem to be effective in improving the compressor performace, even though not being patentable. 

   The solutions are evaluated and tested, and some of them were introduced into the mass production.  They applied 9 international/national patents.  The annual cost saving from the mass-production solutions is estimated to be about $10 Million.  The project were granted the Samsung Achievement Award in 2003, the paper reported.

   --  This case study is really amazing especially in the point that the authors generated better and better solutions.  During the Q&A of the oral presentation, the author especially mentioned about this point of sequential generation of solutions:  "Even though only one 'best' solution is usually shown in textbook examples of applying ARIZ, it is important in real applications to  generate better and better solutions for one problem."   I feel there is another issue to discuss about in this case study: In this case, the TRIZ Experts have generated solutions and have actually designed them in detail.  In ordinary cases of industries in Japan (and in most other countries), the roles of TRIZ (or USIT) experts should be more limited and instead the roles of engineers should be much increased.  Namely, the experts (or experienced people) of problem solving methods should work collaborately with the subject-matter experts (or experienced engineers).
  

   Darrell Mann (Systematic Innovation Ltd, UK) and Juergen Jantschgi (University of Leoben, Austria [6]  have presented their work achieved in the EU's SUPPORT program, with the title of "Case  Studies in TRIZ: Renewable Energy Systems".  The main aim of the project was to develope an educational materials for sustainable designs.  The paper seems to stress on the general importance of promoting sustainable design/engineering by applying TRIZ. 

   Their first case study shows a TRIZ approach to the improvement of Wind turbine design.  They show that the TRIZ knowledge of Trends of Evolution can readily be applied for suggesting ideas for improvement.  As an example, for generating ideas of improvement of the wind-turbin blades, the knowledge of step-wise jumps along the Trends of Evolution was applied in the follow way:

   The merit of this method lies in its simple logic of application and yet its effectiveness and power of stimulating a lot of useful ideas.  This power will be enhanced by user's experiences and knowledge of examples.

   Their second case study is to find odour control processes within water treatment systems.  This case study  is not at the stage of showing practical solutions but rather of demonstrating the importance of sustainable zero-emission engineering.  For building up a system of sustainable solutions, knowledge bases of sustainability-focused, functionally-classified effects would be a great service. TRIZ community could help to create them, they say. 

   Isak Bukhman and Stephen Brown (Invention Machine Corp., USA) [33]  also presented a paper demonstrating "A Repeatable Process for Improving Sustainable Wind Energy Generation".  Their process is rather voluminous as shown in the following figure of "Project Roadmap".  Within the ARIZ parts, traditional TRIZ methods are empowered by the Invention Machine's software tools (Gold Fire Innovator). 

   They have created 32 solutions by using TRIZ, Value Engineering, and Information Fund (i.e. Scientific Effects Liblaly, Patent Collections, and Web based information).  After evaluation, they have shown the following 6 concepts.  -- These concepts are interesting indeed for me, but the paper does not claealy show how they have been developedactually. 

   Solution (1):  Trimming the gear boxes and connecting the stator of permanent-magnet synchronous generator directly with the blade. 

   Solution (2):  Doubled blades rotating in the opposite ways.

   Solution (3):  Adding stationary blades behind the rotating blades for the purpose of suppressing turbulent air stream and imporving the propeller efficiency.

   Solution (4):  A blade in the form of Mobius strip is fixed on a shaft by means of spokes.

   Solution (5):  Using hydraullic constructionf of the blade, the rigity of the blade is adjusted by the pressure so as to best match the wind speed.

   Solution (6):  Make the rear part of the blade flexible and controllable with an actuator.

    Simon Litvin (GEN3 Partners, USA) [18] has presented an interesting presentation (though I missed) with the title of "Objective Criteria of WOW Effect in Consulting".  For attracting the customers, he says, the consultants should demonstrate some real results which the customers say "Wow!".  He shows the following 4 categories of "Wow" demonstrating each with one wonderful example.  

   (1) The project outcome significantly exceeds what had been initially promised. -- Example:  Xerox Corp. once had a problem in their toner packaging process.  The toner is apt to clog the gaps for pouring the powder into a tube, even with mechanical activators.  GEN3 analyzed that the toner packaging process could be sped up by converting the toner into a fluidized state, which could be accomplished with the aid of a specialy selected mode of vibration.  A natural disbelief in the presented extraordinary results represents and additional problem.  Such disbelief could be eliminated by comprehensive substantiation, starting with a convincng and illustrative experiment.  To work out such experimental substantiation, GEN3 uses 'Function-Oriented Search' with the support of a large body of technology experts 'Global Knowledge Network'.  GEN3 designed and manufactured a unique vibro-activator and mounted onto Xerox's standard equipment for the toner packaging.  The result of the vibro-activator operation was phenomenal: thevelocity of toner flow increased 18-fold (i.e. by 1800 %). 

   (2) The project states and solves an utterly non-trivial problem.  -- Example.  Once they worked with Proctoer & Gamble on manufacturing method of instant coffee.  The initial problem statement was: "Develop a method for producing a version of instant coffee that, when dissolved in hot water, would be indistinguishable from freshly brewed natural coffee".  The author worked from a quite diferent angle, and re-stated the problem as: "Propose a method for quick and effective brewing of natural coffee in a cup with boiled water, where the liquid wold not turn cloudy, and would not cause a grainiy sensation in the mouth".   This problem statement quickly led to a conclusion: the human tongue cannot react to particles smaller tan a certain size.  Hence, the solution to the problem lies in simply reducing the size of coffee granules.  The problem is solved.  No traditional coffee making, no paper bags, and much simpler production process.  After this conceptual solution, a grinder of required capacity was found thour the standard 'Function-Oriented Search'. 

   (3)  The project provide an utterly non-trivial solution for a known problem.  -- Example.  General Electric coame to GEN3 with the request of reducing the manufacturing cost of their snap switch.  The typical approach is to reduce the number of different types of components.   By using Trimming and then Another dimension, the author has designed a snap switch composed of two identical parts.  One of the parts turned by 180° and is assembled as shown in the figure.  An operational prototype was really convincing to the customers.

   (4) The project proposes a solution that is absolutely ready for implementation.  -- Example.  A Russian company asked GEN3 to reduce the manufacturing cost of disposable razors.  It was known that a process of cementation (surface hardening) in a tunnel oven with NH₃ causes a number of problems.  Thorough analysis of the whole procedure revealed that the razor sharpening process after the cementation actually strips off the cemented layers.  Thus the hardened layer is not involved at the cutting edge.  Hence the troublesome cementation process was just eliminated without affecting the quality of the blade.  Usually this kindof solutions are associated with historically formed circumstances, which no one ever thoroughly analyzed or questioned, the author says. 

   All these four examples are very interesting.  It is worthy of studying closely how the problems are analyzed and solved.  Importance of demonstrating the solution concepts with experiments and prototypes is stressed much in this presentation.   -- The present author understands such importance but also suppose that this kind of demonstration exceeds the range of TRIZ as a problem solving methodology (or the ordinary capability of a TRIZ practitioner).  So we should understand the necessity of some organizational system for TRIZ specialists to work cooperatively with engineers in the fields; a global network of engineers ('Global Knowledge Network') is for GEN3 while a intimate group of engineers inside our own companies.  Function-Oriented Search seems to be the powerful method for supporting these actibities.   


    Mansour Ashtiani and Stephen Dourson (Delphi Corp., USA) [37] have given a presentationwith the title of "Applying TRIZ/Semantic TRIZ to Root Cause Analyis, Design, and Refinement of Automotive Components."  Two case studies are reported.  The first is the combined use of TRIZ with a CAD simulation tool for solving a problem in a vlave disc.  The second is the application of TRIZ and its software tool for finding root  causes in case of breakage of an Integral Cinching Latch Actuator.  The authors say Delphi is integrating TRIZ into their Six Sigma program.   

   Alexander Kynin, Seunglhee Suh, and Seungheon Han (Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Korea) [1] have presented a paper on "Use of TRIZ at Creation of New Materials."  This paper introduces a method of predicting the properties of a polymer by interpolating the known properties of polymers.  I was disappointed much after listening. 
           

   
 (D) Applicaton of TRIZ to Business, Management, and Human Problems

   Jon Wm. Ezickson (USA) [9] has given a presentation with the title of "Deploying Innovation and Inventive Thinking in Organizations -- Applying TRIZ to Non-technical Fields of Business."  The author is an accountant having about 200 businesses and individuals as the clients.  Having  studied TRIZ for  these three, four years, he consult (small) business executives concerning accountancy/finance and is trying to introduce TRIZ in various business problems.  Thus his paper is unique and practical.  When he talks about businesses and their executives, he has in his mind many real instances of businesses and their executives. 

   Analyzing the current situation ofTRIZ penetration in industries, he shows the following figure of business  organization.  He says that  even in (big) manufacturing companies only engineerign and research departments may be exposed to TRIZ and that the ignorance of TRIZ by executives and by other departments causes the difficulty in penetrating TRIZ company wide. 

   Executives are certainly the keypersons for  promoting TRIZ across the barriers  of  different  business departments/units.   Senior managers are often aware of the need and importance of innovation programs but more than half of them, in some surveys, express disappointment to the finantial return of innovation programs.  The main reason for the failure of TRIZ in getting appeal to executives is the mismatching, the author says, between the TRIZ' engineering mind and  executives' business mind.  He writes:

   Then he discusses how to make deployment of TRIZ happen.  He, as a consultant for promoting TRIZ, suggests how to write a formal business plan for the TRIZ promotion to be addressed to senior executives.  He shows the contents of a formal business plan as: Executive summary; Financial analysis; Benefits, necessity, and advantages; Implementation plan; Performance measurement metrics; Historical and present assessment; Competitor analysis; and Organization, staffing, and mangement.  (Though these may be trivial for some readers, they are instructive for me.) 

   The author also pointed out the necessity of integration of TRIZ with mangaement and quality programs, saying:

    At the end of his paper, he mentioned on some recent derivatives of TRIZ, including ASIT (Roni Horowitz), USIT (Ed SIckafus and Toru Nakagawa), and UIT (Rodney King).  He pointed out the need of their education to reorient towards more management and non-technical orientation.  --  The author's suggestion should  apply to USIT most among these three.   The present author (i.e. Nakagawa) does not have enough basis for extending USIT into business applications.  Collaboration in such a  field is very welcome.

   Graham Rawlinson(UK) [12] has given a presentation with the title of "(Exploring Issues and Ways of Dealing) Using TRIZ to Be (with Being) the Best Facilitator in the World".   He writes in the abstract as:

If you use TRIZ in groups then you will be leading a facilitation session, or you will be training, or maybe both.  Training in such a hands on process such as being creative and getting innovative solutions is anyway more like facilitating learning than teaching.  Or it should be.
There is a host of knowledge out there about ways of handling groups and this paper and session present some of the issues, soem ways of handling those issues, and offers a chance to have a dialogue about what you can do, should do, might do, mustn't do.

   Jack Hipple (Innovation-TRIZ, USA) [30] has given a presentation with the title of "Using Lines and Patterns of Evolution to Improve the Chances of Finding the Fuzzy Front End." Here, the word 'Fuzzy Front End' means any problem area that are not yet well articulated and are full of ambiguity.  In such a new field of problem, human culture has been known to make progress very slowly in the hindsight.  Thus the author discusses how to apply TRIZ concept of Trends of Evolution for accelerating the focusing on the problem and finding any solution.                             
               
 

Miscellaneous / Concluding Remarks

     After the dinner on second day (April 18), Boris Zlotin, a TRIZ Master, gave a talk.  The Agenda announce it to be "A virtual tour of the Ford Museum through the eye of a TRIZ Master".  Boris talked on his research history in the former USSR, talked about the concept of Resources, talked about Directed Evolution method, and talked about more and more.  The talk started around 20:30, and I had to excuse myself for retiring to bed for recovering from jet lag at 23:00 while the talk was still going on some more.

     In the Closing  Session of the Conference, Larry Smith (President of Altshuller Institute) led a summary session of remarks from the  participants with the title of 'Liked' and then 'Would like'. 

• Most important outcome of this TRIZCON2005 was a number of presentations of actually applying TRIZ to industrial, technical problems.  How to apply TRIZ has been understood widely more and more, and the usage of TRIZ in various case studies are understandable (or traceable) with typical methods in TRIZ.
  
• Integration of TRIZ with relevant methodologies, such as Value engineering, Lean engineering, Sustainable engineering, Case-based reasoning, Software engineering, etc., have been studied.  It is clear that TRIZ need to collaborate and futher integrate with these and other methodologies. 
  
• One point I often feel some frustration in TRIZCONs in USA is the mismatching of TRIZ promoters (mostly TRIZ consultants especially led by Russian TRIZ Masters) and TRIZ users (industrial users, academic people, and other people in society).  It was symbollic that the fist Panel on "TRIZ - Theory and Practice" was formed by 5 Russian TRIZ Masters + 1 American (Ellen Domb) while the second Panel on "Integrating TRIZ with other Problem Solving Tools" was formed by 5 Americans (in industries or consultancy) and no Russian TRIZ Masters.  In this situation, Len Kaplan's talk [14] seems to have special importance.   More active participation by industrial users and by academic people must certainly be the key to further growth of TRIZ, especially in the USA. 
  
• Presentations from Korea, China, and Japan seem to have special importance, even though due to language difficulty many of them might have missed in getting enough attention.  Korea must be the most active country in introducing TRIZ and has reached at the beginning of their rapid growth stage with TRIZ, K.W. Lee says [36].  Nakagawa's presentation [31] also shows a unique approach to introduce TRIZ in a more practical way; forming USIT as a new generation of TRIZ. 
  
• Application of TRIZ to non-technical fields is getting clear little by little.  Jon Ezickson's paper [9] is illustartive how to approach executives and non-technical divisions in business.  For this area TRIZ community should obtain more peole and should work more intensively. 
  

     In Detroit during the Conference it was exceptionally warm and fine. The  conference settings at Delphi Technology Center and guest rooms at the Windham Gardens Hotel were excellent.  We thank all the people, especially Richard Langevin (TIC) and Mansour Ashtiani (Delphi), for the efforts of making this Conference possible.

     TRIZCON2006 is being planned to be held in spring next year.  Details will be annonced later in the Web site of Altshuller Institute.  

(By the way:  ETRIA TRIZ Conference  "TRIZ Future 2005" is announced to be held in Graz, Austria, on Nov. 16-18, 2005 [See ETRIA Web site].   Due date of  extended abstract is  May 10, 2005.   Wishing  to meet many of you there!)

 List of Papers in the Proceedings and Other Presentations

      Note: 

--:  Published but not presented, 
--&:  Not published but presented with a handout, 
--#:  Not published but presented with no handout.
[1] - [37]:  Paper number in the Proceedings (there are some missing numbers).
               Presentors at the conference  are shown in the boldface below.

[A]  Keynote Speech:  Excellence in the Automotive Industry - The Importance of Innovation
   --#   Jean Botti (Delphi Corporation, USA)

[B]  Panel Discussion:  "TRIZ - Theory and Practice"
   --#   Larry Smith (President of AI, USA) (Coordinator); Isak Bukhman (Invention Machine Inc., USA), Ellen Domb (TRIZ Journal, USA), Victor Fey ( , USA), Simon Litvin (GEN3 Partners, USA), Zinovy Royzen ( , USA), Alla Zusman (Ideation International Inc., USA) 

[C]  After Dinner Talk:  "Eyes of a TRIZ Master"
   --#   Boris Zlotin (Ideation International Inc., USA)  

[D]  Panel Discussion:  "Integrating TRIZ with Other Problem Solving Tools"
   --#    (Coordinator); Deb Nally (Uniworld, USA), Jerry Kaufman (J.J. Kaufman Assc., USA), Mansour Ashtiani (Delphi, USA), Rick Gour (TRW, USA), Jack Hipple (Innovation TRIZ, USA) 

[1]  Use of TRIZ at Creation of New Materials
           Alexander Kynin, Seunglhee Suh, and Seungheon Han (Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Korea)

[3]  Institutionalizing Innovation
            Praveen Gupta and Shan Shanmugham (Quality Technology Co., USA)

[4]  Research and Development on TRIZ in China  
   --       Zhao Xinjun (Northeasten University, P.R. China)

[5]  TRIZ Applications in LG Cable and Case Studies
            Young-Ju Kang, Young-Il Kwon, Pyeong-Kwan Chung, and Alexander Skuratovich (LG Cable, Korea) 

[6]  Case  Studies in TRIZ: Renewable Energy Systems
            Darrell Mann (Systematic Innovation Ltd, UK) and Juergen Jantschgi (University of Leoben, Austria) 

[7]  TRIZ Oriented Artificial Intelligence
   --       Mehdi Akbari (Islamic Azad University of Khomeini Shahr, Iran)

[8]  Software Engineering and TRIZ (1) Structured Programming Reviewed with TRIZ
   --       Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Japan)
               [Reposted in the "TRIZ Home Page in Japan", May , 2005 ]

[9]  Deploying Innovation and Inventive Thinking in Organizations -- Applying TRIZ to Non-technical Fields of Business
            Jon Wm. Ezickson (  , USA)

[10]  Innovation Education Principles with Computer Based Training System
            Haibo Duan and Yue Lin (IWINT Inc, P.R. China)

[12]  (Exploring Issues and Ways of Dealing) Using TRIZ to Be (with Being) the Best Facilitator in the World
            Graham Rawlinson(  , UK)

[14]  Three Main Flops of TRIZ -- And How to Avoid Them
            Len Kaplan (OutCompete, USA)

[15]  Methodology for the Evaluation of the Innovation Level of Products and Processes (in the TECNOS Award Context)
             Noel Leon, Jose Jesus Martinez, and Carlos Castillo (Tec de Monterrey, ITESM, Mexico)

 [16]  Innovation Management and Knowledge Management in Process and Industrial Systems Engineering: TRIZ and Case-Based Reasoning
              Guillermo Cortes Robles, Stephane Negny , Jean-Marc Le Lann, and Pascale Zarate (ENSIACET, Toulouse, France) 

[18]  Objective Criteria of WOW Effect in Consulting
              Simon Litvin (GEN3 Partners, USA)

[20]  The Concept of Resources in TRIZ: Past, Present and Future
              Boris Zlotin and Alla Zusman (Ideation International Inc., USA)

[22]  Successful TRIZ Education Experience in University
               Minyi Zhang (IWINT Inc., P.R. China) and Zhanwen Niu (Tianjin University, P.R. China)

[24]  Enabling Innovation in the Corporate Environment: Champions, Results and Infrastructure
               Richard Platt (Intel, Israel)

[25]  Use of EMS Models to Enable the Effective Use of TRIZ System Operators in Engineering Design
               Madara Ogot (Pennsylvania State University, USA) 

[28]  Integration of Value Engineering with TRIZ through FAST Diagrams
               Peter Hanik, Vladimir Proseanic, and Svetlana Visnepolschi (Ideation International Inc., USA) (Quality Process Consulting, USA)

[29]  Combining Value Engineering and TRIZ in the Automotive Industry
              John Boza and Rick Gour(TRW Automotive, USA)

[30]   Using Lines and Patterns of Evolution to Improve the Chances of Finding the Fuzzy Front End
                Jack Hipple (Innovation-TRIZ, USA) 

[31]  Overall Dataflow Structure for Creative Problem Solving in TRIZ/USIT
               Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Japan)

[32]  Lean/TRIZ:  Eliminating Waste in Product Development through Innovation
               Steven Ungvari (Institute for Lean Design, USA) 

[33]  The TRIZ Give Way to the Wind, and Give the Wind Away:  A Repeatable Process for Improving Sustainable Wind Energy Generation
               Isak Bukhman and Stephen Brown (Invention Machine Corp., USA)

[34]  TRIZ Improvement of Rotary Compressor Design
              Valery Krasnoslobodtsev, Ju-Young Lee, and Jeong-Bae Lee (Samsung Electronics, Korea)  

[35]  Marketing TRIZ in the Global Marketplace: A Primer
              Joseph P. Cool (Cool & Associates, USA)

[36]  TRIZ Education at Universities in Korea and Their Activities for Expanding Mutual Cooeration with TRIZ Team at Big Companies in Korea
              Kyeong-Won Lee (Korea Polytechnic University, Korea)

[37]  Applying TRIZ/Semantic TRIZ to Root Cause Analyis, Design, and Refinement of Automotive Components
              Mansour Ashtiani and Stephen Dourson (Delphi Corp., USA)

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Last updated on Jun. 14, 2005.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp