If you're new to TRIZ this collection of articles will provide a useful starting point for your research.
Using TRIZ to Help Manage Real World RequirementsThe Capture, Understanding and Management of Requirements is, very properly, considered to be a crucial element in the lifecycle of a successful project or system. We will use some TRIZ tools to help tackle both the understanding, as well as some possible solutions to the problem.
What's Your ProblemRather than scratching heads when faced with a seemingly impossible contradiction in a job, engineers could do worse than apply the Triz theory.
TRIZ - An Introduction [PDF 564 KB]
Presentation by Ian Mitchell CEng MIMechE Ian Mitchell is a longterm TRIZ practitioner and Chartered Engineer. Ian has previously spoken at TRIZCON2000 in the USA and the TRIZ Future 2003 World Conference amongst others.
Redesign of an Industrial Fire Alarm [PDF 36 KB]
Karen Gadd, Oxford Creativity A leading manufacturer of fire alarms was losing market share. They needed a step change and a big improvement on their current product. After a year in redesign and despite a team of highly motivated and clever engineers working hard on the problem they hadn't solved it.
Discover how, by using TRIZ the engineers found their answer - an answer which cut their manufacturing costs by over 50% and gave their customers a better product.
Problem solving: looking back to go forward Article reproduced from Ferret, courtesy of Manufacturers' Monthly
The Message of TRIZ: Innovation Can Be Codified Howard Smith, CTO CSC European Group, Corporate Office of Innovation
Remember how surprised you were when Google found the website you needed and ranked it Number 1? Some TRIZ users experience a similar epiphany. Don Masingale, retired senior engineer at Boeing Corporation, will tell you that TRIZ holds the answer to just about any engineering problem you can imagine. Quoted in PlaneTalk, Boeing's internal newsletter, he said, "When you see something this good, you just can't walk away from it. I use TRIZ every day in my thinking and processes. It's an innovative way of solving problems and meeting all the criteria our customers want us to have, whether commercial or military."
TRIZ - No Shortcuts HereHoward Smith, CTO CSC European Group, Corporate Office of Innovation
If you are tempted to dip into TRIZ looking for simple answers to complex problems, think again. Yet for those that go further, and who learn the basis for how TRIZ works, a quick look under the hood at a comprehensive modern version of TRIZ will leave many stunned by its depth, applicability, and potential.
TRIZ: Mumbo Jumbo?Howard Smith, CTO CSC European Group, Corporate Office of Innovation
Perhaps because of the secrecy that surrounds individual TRIZ projects, stories that would otherwise attract attention to the methodology are suppressed and the vast majority of people in business have never heard of it. Yet TRIZ may be about to go mainstream. Will it take its place alongside more widely known and practised methods such as Six Sigma, QFD and Taguchi? Some claim that's already happened.
What Innovation is. How companies develop operating systems for innovation [PDF 754 KB]
Howard Smith, CTO CSC European Group, Corporate Office of Innovation
The goal of innovation is to create business value by developing ideas from mind to market. And it is, for most companies, tremendously difficult to achieve. Innovation isn't difficult because employees don't have good ideas. The world is awash with creativity and technological breakthroughs. Rather, myriad obstacles in the idea-to-cash process limit a company's ability to innovate. Rigor and training are required to overcome these obstacles. Seen as the creator of new value, innovation isn't hit-or-miss, trial-and-error lateral thinking, but a repeatable process. What is innovative today is the realisation that it can be achieved systematically.
Historically, innovation has been embedded in organizational structure as the responsibility of the R&D department, focused almost exclusively on the development of technology in supply-driven markets. But the idea-to-cash process is so complex that it requires the participation of all employees to be successful. Rather than a business structure focused on R&D, however, what companies need today is a business process focused on innovation.
A White Paper, reproduced here courtesy of Howard Smith, CTO CSC European Group, Corporate Office of Innovation.
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