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Report: ETRIA 2001 Conference |
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(c) Toru
Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Japan),
This
is a personal report of ETRIA Conference held a week ago. (See ETRIA
Official Web site.) About 50 people attended and discussed at
the conference, but I believe thousands of people more are interested in
the papers and discussions at the conference. So I think it
worthwhile to write a participation report from my personal view as soon
as possible, as I did for TRIZCON2001
held last March in USA. Because of my duty at the university I
cannot expect enough time to write two reports in Japanese and in English;
hence I have chosen to write this first in English for my readers in the
world including those in Japan. Please forgive me and correct
me if there is any mistake/misunderstanding in this report.
Outline
of the Agenda: Presentations in single track from 9 a.m.
through 5 p.m. for the three days. Overview: This is the first World Conference on TRIZ organized by ETRIA (European TRIZ Association) and held in (western) Europe. ETRIA was established just a year ago as a result of collaboration among leading TRIZ researchers/practitioners across the countries in western Europe (see ETRIA's official site: http://www.ETRIA.net). The TRIZ Future 2001 Conference was organized with relatively short preparation time, but resulted in much success, thanks to Mr. Darrell Mann, the President of ETRIA, and many others. The conference site was a hotel at waterside in the City of Bath. Bath, as I learned during this trip, has a historic hot spring bath built by Romans in the 1st century and beautiful Georgean-style buildings built later in 18th and 19th centuries after the re-discovery of the hot spring and consequent bathing boom in the high society. Bath was designated a World Heritage Site in 1987. The total number of participants was slightly over 50 (the list of participants distributed on the third morning contain 47 people). Participants came from the following countries (according to my guess on the basis of the participants' email address): 16 from UK, 8 from Germany, 5 from France, 3 from Korea, 2 each from Belgium, The Netherlands, USA, and Russia, and 1 each from Switzerland, Austria, and Japan, besides 2 unknown. All the presentations were carried out in a single track and were always attended by more than 40 participants with keen and intimate atmosphere. Each presentation was given 30 minutes in the program but actually allowed about 40-45 minutes, as a result of hot discussions and flexible coordination which became possible due to cancellation of several presentations as shown above. In contrast to the TRIZ conferences held in USA, no business displays of software tools etc. were arranged in the conference site. Though TRIZ consultants/businesses and industrial users were predominant, there were 20 academic people including postgraduate students. The Proceedings having 281 pages were beautifully printed. It was announced that the Proceedings will be made available through ETRIA Web site to any people. ETRIA also decided that the authors of the conference papers have the copyrights of their paper and thus have the rights of posting them in Web sites, etc. Topics of the presentations were more or less similar to the ones at the recent TRIZCONs. I will briefly review important presentations below essentially in the order of their presentation. (I will not mention about the papers which were not actually presented, because of my shortage in time.) First Day (Nov. 7, 2001) David Knott [1] characterizes the Design Process as a circular (or spiral) process containing the phases of Analyze, Understand, Decide, Create, and Capture. Then he points out that the investment of analysis tools and CAD have given benefits in the Analysis, Understand and Capture phases but has the tendency of squeezing the time of Understand and Create phases. He reported that Rolls-Royce has introduced TRIZ for providing capability in the Understand and Create phases and trained about 200 engineers so far. Dmitry Kucheravy [2] presented the OTSM-TRIZ vision. OTSM is "General Theory of Advanced Thinking". This has been the main research theme carried out in Minsk with the group of people led by Nikolai Khomenko. (The Minsk group is now working actively spread in Strasbourg, Toronto, and Seoul, besides their home city.) OTSM-TRIZ is a version of TRIZ philosophy much expanded into the domains such as science, biology, scientific fiction, arts, education, business, economics, etc. Handout of slides was provided separately from the proceedings. You may understand the core part of the presentation in Khomenko's article "Minsk TRIZ Center and OTSM-TRIZ (General Theory of Strong Thinking)" posted in my Web site in September 1999. Nikolai Shpakovsky et al. [3] presented the general scheme of problem solving in a charming "Christmas Tree Model" with a case study. Peter Chuksin (together with Shpakovsky) reported in [12] about "Forecasting Map", i.e. a scheme of representing the forecast of specific technical system, and its applications. Shpakovsky, Chuksin, and two more coauthors are Russian TRIZ experts currently working for Samsung and LG Electronics, in South Korea. Shpakovsky[22] also reported their development of "TRIZ Trainer" software in Samsung. This software is a CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) tool with proprietary examples of application and intends to support on-line individual training of mass engineers in their company. It is remarkable that these two big Korean companies are well proceeding to introduce TRIZ by employing these Russian TRIZ experts. (As far as I know, there is no similar cases in Japan and in USA.) Daniel Spielberg [5] reported his thesis work at RWTH Aachen and its extension/application at Suspa Holding GmbH. He describes the mechanisms of "analogy model" and "transfer model" for problem solving in a matrix style similar to QFD. He discusses that technical knowledge of specific fields can be well accumulated in his scheme by use of non-dimensional indices in the dimension theory and that new problems (i.e. the problems located outside the index range) can be submitted to solve with TRIZ. Gert Poppe and Bart Gras [6] presented a clear and very useful paper for the application of TRIZ in the process industry. They first point out that process innovation predominates product innovation in importance in the latter half period of evolution of a technical system. Then they notice that many TRIZ novices in process industry regard TRIZ unapplicable to process innovation. Poppe et al. list up the apparent bases of such arguements, and then argue that TRIZ is very useful in process industry too. The authors has kindly agreed to repost their paper and some additional slides in my Web site. (Please be patient for a few weeks, my readers.) Elies
Jones [7] presented the work for her thesis on the application of
TRIZ to "Eco-Innovation", i.e. for developing new, less
environmentally harmful concepts for products, processes, and services.
She summarizes four cases of interviews to such TRIZ practitioners for
their practices. Then she proposes a simplified TRIZ process
which was actually used by engineering students in an experimental
workshop. This "workshop" was conducted by six groups
of students in parallel for evaluating the effects of her proposed problem
solving procedure. Her procedure has five steps as follows: Ian Mitchell [8] of Ilford Imaging UK talked his experiences of teaching TRIZ, organizing TRIZ user groups, and applying TRIZ to various corporate problems. He says he is a manager of a maintenance engineering section and is the only TRIZ expert in his company. But he has taught a number of 2-hour TRIZ seminars and keeps operating the lunch-time TRIZ user-group meeting every week for these four years. At the lunch time meetings, they not only solve problems together but also keep improving their TRIZ knowledge. His talk was nice just like the one ("Edge Suck-Off Problem") he presented at TRIZCON2000. On my request, he has promised me to write down his presentation and contribute it to my Web site after Christmas. Denis Cavallucci et al. [9] reported the general framework of their TRIZ study in Strasbourg and Roland De Guio [14] described the overall activities of their laboratory in Strasbourg. It is very impressive that this French laboratory has recently established an excellent research and education capability in TRIZ. They say the group currently has about 30 members, including 15 faculty/research members, several PhD students, several Master degree students, and two Russian-French professional translators. With the trigger of Cavallucci's TRIZ study since 1995, the whole laboratory made a clear decision in March 2000 to concentrate their efforts onto TRIZ. Their group work in the name of LRPS (Laboratoire de Recherche en Productique de Strasbourg) in research and in the name of ENSAIS (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts et Industries de Strasbourg) in teaching and training. Nikolai Khomenko and Dmitry Kucheravy from Minsk joined this group. Thus the TRIZ research activities of this group seem to be very wide and systematic to introduce the Russian results of TRIZ and OTSM. Fig. 1 of
[9] describes the three major trends in the creative process: (a)
Creativity is a chain of phases (e.g. Osborn's model), (b) Creativity is
an innate art (e.g. Wertheimer's vision), and (c) Creativity can be
studied as a science (Altshuller's Theory). They propose a framework
for integrating TRIZ into the design process. Their framework
is somewhat classical, I feel. This probalbly reflects their
academic stance and their efforts to introduce the achievements of TRIZ in
Russian publications/manuscripts in an understandable form in French/English. Second Day (Nov. 8, 2001) Simon Dewulf et al. [11] introduced their new TRIZ software tool ("CreaTRIZ") which is trying to support user's problem solving process with modern interactive and animated IT technologies. They pointed out the importance of attributes in the functional analysis. (This point is more clearly stated by Sickafus in USIT. See e.g. Nakagawa, Apr. 2000.) They also show the software's capability of representing the change/difference of the functional analysis diagram in time and in multi-user view. Darrell Mann [13] showed an interesting example of searching genuine TRIZ-like solutions in the patent database. Ideal Solutions in TRIZ are characterized by their capability of solving the problem 'by itself'; for example, self-cleaning, self-balancing, self-aligning, etc. It is important to distinguish such ideality-driven solutions from a much larger number of ordinary 'automatic' or 'self-doing' solutions. The distinguishment is illustrated in the following figure. (Mann says no patent of self-cleaning filter is ideality-driven yet unfortunately.) Fig. 3 (p. 138) [Will be inserted here later.] He has searched for the 'self'-based patents (including 'automatic', 'auto-', etc.) in the US patent DB for the period of last 15 years. Checking the searched patents on the case-by-case basis, he has found over 2000 Ideality-Driven 'Self' patents. [Two participants asked about the discrimination; and Mann confirmed this repeatedly.] He has classified those 2000 patents with the categories of functions. There are a large family of self-adjusting, self-positioning, self-centering, self-leveling, self-opening/closing, etc. which are associated with a physical movement. Second largest class delivers with non-physical changes, including the functions of self-test, self-time, self-regulate, self-limit, self-calibrate, etc. Then he further points out there are a large number of patents which make use of newly invented materials or newly discovered effects, etc. He mentions that there are a lot of patents describing not-yet-familiar, extraordinary ideas. This accumulation of examples of 'Ideality-Driven Self-Function' patents must be a treasure of ideas of inventors and TRIZ learners, since 'Ideality' would very often be thought almost equivalent to 'Impossible'. Walter Eversheim et al. [15] reported their integrated framework of using Senario Technique, QFD, and TRIZ sequentially in this order. Senario Technique works to deduce from current product and current customer requirements into future customer requirements. Then, from future customer requirements, QFD reveals technical requirements to future products and contradictions among them. Then, TRIZ is applied to solve such contradictions and to obtain solutions of future product design. An example is shown for a future vacuum cleaner. Toru Nakagawa [16] reported as follows: "Penetration of TRIZ is slow because TRIZ overwhelms the learners. The essence of TRIZ can be expressed in only 50 words. Simplifying the TRIZ process of problem solving is necessary for penetration, and USIT (Unified Structured Inventive Thinking) developed by Ed Sickafus is a good candidate for such an easier TRIZ procedure. Experiences of training and applying USIT in Japan show high evaluation of USIT. We should promote TRIZ/USIT in industries with a Slow-but-Steady Strategy." My paper is now posted in my Web site "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" (in English). Some participants made questions about the parallel use of USIT and TRIZ knowledgebase and about users' response of USIT after they know TRIZ better. I replied that in Japan almost all the USIT learners have learned TRIZ beforehand and are TRIZ software users and that they have found USIT easier to actually apply in their companies. After my presentation, I was invited as one of the four panelists in the Panel Discussion [21] and I gave a short presentation some more about the current approaches in Japan. Julien Vincent et al. [17] was a very interesting presentation. Professor Vincent and Darrell Mann (half time) recently moved from University of Reading to University of Bath, and is building up a laboratory of biomimetics in Department of Mechanical Engineering and Design. They have several graduate students at moment. Current TRIZ knowledgebases do not yet include useful design ideas which were developed by plants and animals for over a billion of years, even though G.S. Altshuller mentioned its importance in his first paper on TRIZ. Vincent et al. have found that the key to accumulating such biological knowledge must be the functionality. For the functions of "staying warm", "cleaning or washing", and "joining surfaces", for example, the nature has developed a huge variety of designs. Such nature's designs have not been accumulated well in the academic world of biology, and are far little known to engineers. So with the aim of systematic technology transfer from biology to engineering, they are developing the framework and are actually trying to accumulate functional examples of nature's designs. This is certainly a treasury of new designs and new technologies. Bruno
Ruchti et al. [18] reported a new way of
applying TRIZ to business problems. They think the principles of
TRIZ can be applied to business problems as well as technical ones, but
they have found it better to reorganize the 40 Principles of Invention
into "12 Innovation Principles for Business and Management"
for easier usage. The 12 new principles are represented in pairs of
opposite operations. They are: Darrell Mann and Ellen Domb [20] is another application of TRIZ in the business field. Mass Customization is "the economically viable creation of products tailored to the specific needs of individual customers". This has been an important issue in all businesses in history even though with different positions and significance depending on their economical/technical situations. They discuss how to use TRIZ principles like Contradictions, Ideality, Trends, and Functionality in this issue and showed some case study examples of shoes, lights, and home customizable foods. Methodologies for applying TRIZ in non-technical fields are now getting clearer little by little through these works, I feel. Panel
Discussion [21] was opened on the second day afternoon in the time
slot where two canceled papers on Education were originally programmed.
The main issue was "How to penetrate TRIZ". Since
comments of panelists and those from floor were so broad, I cannot
summarize them here. Elies Jones made a question on children
education and Dmitry Kucheravy answered that TRIZ-based education
is now widely tried in former USSR countries for a wide variation of age.
He said that education is a direction of TRIZ activities but he also
commented that experiments in education are difficult not in conducting
but also in evaluating. It is much desired to discuss the issue of
TRIZ-based education in TRIZCON2002 next April. Igor Vertkin [24] gave a talk with a number of questions to the audience. He worked at Baku with G. S. Altshuller and coauthored the book "How to Become a Genius". He immigrated to UK 10 years ago and is now working as a TRIZ consultant with a "portable TRIZ" (i.e. just a cut-bone approach of TRIZ, he says). He explained the characterization of the four stages in the S-Curve, and then asked the audience "Where is TRIZ in the S-Curve?". Various people answered "Stage 3", "Stage 2", etc. I answered "Stage 3 or 4 in Russia, and Stage 1 in western countries". Answers to this question are quite different among TRIZ specialists depending on what he/she means by "TRIZ" and what he/she intends to achieve in the future. Vertkin said "TRIZ in the 80s is now dead and nothing essentially new has been achieved for these 15 years". Then he further asked the audience "What are you going to do in the S-Curve of TRIZ?" and "How can you use TRIZ to start Next S-Curves?" We, specialists and promoters of TRIZ, should be prepared for answering these questions. Nakagawa's presentation [16] meant to start a new S-Curve of (refined) TRIZ in the whole world by reformulating/simplifying TRIZ so as to be readily acceptable by ordinary engineers; this is a view of new movement in innovation in technology. Different people of course may have different visions, such as new S-Curves of (refined) TRIZ in the field of business applications, in education, with new software tools, with further extended TRIZ theory, etc. All such activities may be regarded to form a new S-Curve of TRIZ as a whole. Jack Hipple [25] is a TRIZ consultant having the background in psychology. He introduced two psychological assessment tools, i.e. Meyers Briggs Indicator (MBTI) and Kirton Adaptive-Innovative (KAI) tool. TRIZ instructor may use these tools to inquire the participants for 20-30 minutes and use the result for arranging the practice groups of participants according to their problem-solving styles. Hipple also points out that TRIZ needs almost always to enter the situations where preceding tools such as Lateral Thinking and Six Hats are used and that it should be desirable to integrate TRIZ with those methods. Earlier in [23] Hipple showed interesting samples of consumer products he found in shops; they hold wonderful example of application of TRIZ principles. Anja-Karina Pahl [26] presented a paper on the basic philosophy of TRIZ from a psycological view point. She says: "Contradiction is not only a primary constituent of TRIZ but also, more generally, intrinsic to multidimensional thinking. The psycological concept of contradiction can be depicted as mismatched information and its resolution. Thus contradiction is not a flaw in our thought system but a vital indicator that our primary thought system or physical orientation is at odds respect to a second or n-th reference frame. While contradiction is implicit in every step of our reasoning, we can exploit it only when we recognize its relationship to the greater whole." (Sorry, but I did not have enough time to read her paper closely.) In the final session for discussing the future of ETRIA, Leonid Shub [28] raised an important issue. He commented on the fact that about one third of the papers which had been announced in the program and published in the proceedings were not presented and that a few core members of ETRIA were among those no-show authors. This fact was very disappointing for the participants and needs to be improved in the future, he said. Ellen Domb also talked that similar problem of high rate of cancellation occurred in all the four cases of TRIZ conferences held in USA and that this tendency must be overcome in the TRIZ community. In the meeting, reasons for such cancellations were not shown/discussed (Comment by ETRIA Executive Committee: As followed from our conversations with ETRIA members, Mr. Shub was informed about possible absence of several authors prior to the event.) Darrell Mann, the President of ETRIA, reported that the present conference was prepared in a much short time and was operated with the financial risk-taking by Professor Vincent of University of Bath without any commercial funding. The participants of the conference, of course including myself, appreciated all the efforts of people who made this conference possible. Many people who attended or not attended the conference are looking forward to further ETRIA activities. Next ETRIA conference, TRIZ Future 2002, was announced to be held in Strasbourg, France, on November 6-8, 2002. I wish many TRIZ professionals and users meet in Strasbourg next year (and at TRIZCON2002 in St. Louis, USA, next April 28-30, as well). CONFERENCE AGENDA First Day: November 7 (Wednesday) Welcome by Prof.
C. R. Burrows (Univ. of Bath, UK) Keynote
Address (1) Session
1: TRIZ Method I Session
2: Applications I Session
3: TRIZ Method II Second Day: November 8 (Thursday) Session
3: TRIZ Method II (continue from the previous day) Session
4: Methods Integration and Emerging Applications Session
5: Business Applications Panel
Discussion Third Day: November 9 (Friday) Open
Floor Presentations Keynote
Address (3) Session
7: TRIZ Method III Discussion
Meeting for Future ETRIA Closing Address by Darrell Mann (Univ. of Bath) Not
Presented Papers [X1] Problem
Formulation -- A key step in the process of resolution of inventive
problems; by Sebastien Dubois, Nikolai Khomenko, Philippe Lutz, and
Roland De Guio (LRPS, ENSAIS, Strasbourg, France) pp. 11-16 Original
version of the report is available at Dr.
Nakagawa website |
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| Copyright 2001 ETRIA. |