I’ve recently pulled together a diagram showing how the tools of TRIZ relate to each other and I thought it was worth sharing for feedback.

 

Key elements of the diagram are:

The problem to be analysed. Shown in the centre of the diagram

Ideality. Shown surrounding the problem but not directly able to be applied to the problem. Ideality is this case is defined by the ratio of useful functions over harmful functions and costs. With time, the useful functions should, in general, increase and the harmful functions and costs should decrease.

Laws of evolution of technical systems. Once again these are shown surrounding the problem rather than directly acting upon the problem. These are related to how systems develop with time and generally link to the overarching Ideality trend. The law of technological system evolution are:

• Law of Increasing Degree of Ideality;
• Law of Non-Uniform Evolution of Sub-Systems;
• Law of Transition to a Higher-Level System;
• Law of Increasing Flexibility of Systems;
• Law of Transition from Macro- to Micro-Level;
• Law of Shortening of Energy Flow Path;
• Law of Harmonization;
• Law of Completeness;
• Law of Increasing Controllability

More about these in future posts.

Now onto some tools which can be applied directly to the problem:

The first one is Techniques to overcome Contradictions. In TRIZ terms, a contradiction is a situation where one aspect of a system gets better and causes another aspect to get worse. Think about fuel consumption vs acceleration for an automobile as an example. Usually there is an unhappy compromise – known to engineers the world round as a “trade-off”. There are a number of techniques to address contradictions. More on this another time.

The second one is Standard Methods. In TRIZ there are 76 standards – a standard is a TRIZ world problem with a recommended TRIZ world solution. If you can identify which TRIZ world problem your rea world problem relates to, you can identify a TRIZ world solution. The only remaining tricky bit is translating that back into the real world. More on these in a later post.

The third one is Knowledge base of effects. In TRIZ something like 2,500 physical, chemical and geometric effects have been catalogued and can be searched. Invention Machine software is especially good for this, although boy is it pricey. I was quoted £28K for one seat! No way Jose! What a rip-off. IWINT a new software package is likely to be almost as good and a lot cheaper. It certainly looked good at TRIZCON where I saw a demo. Don’t get me started on Invention Machine pricing policy…

Oh yes, I got a bit distracted there. The forth and last one is ARIZ. This is basically a step by step algorithm which helps you to deploy all the tools of TRIZ in concert. ARIZ enable you to view the problem from a number of different perspectives, each of which can give you a fresh insight into the true nature of your problem situation. There are a number of competing algorithms. My personal favorite is Victor Fey’s algorithm in his book Innovation on Demand. It really works! If you get stuck with it just leave a comment on this post and I’d be happy to help out.

I’ve attached an animated powerpoint of the diagram for download tools-of-triz

I’ve just seen an interesting interview on GMnext and it got me thinking. Dr Chris Borroni-Bird was being interviewed by Mark Frauenfelder of boingboing fame about the design freedoms that upcoming automotive innovation could bring. Dr Borroni-Bird is working on prototype fuel cell vehicles at GM and he just talked about two themes:

1. Safety

2. Environment

In terms of safety, Dr Borroni-Bird predicted that this rather unsexy subject would get sexy, first with much more in the area of active safety and ultimately in autonomous driving vehicles. In terms of active safety, I’ve seen some rather good technology demonstrations from Philips a couple of years ago with up to six different objects being tracked in real time as the car travelled down a crowded street. It even tracked parked cars and alerted you if one started to move into your path. Pretty cool. Dr Borroni-Bird said that the whole experience of travelling by car is due to be transformed and the driver will be freed up to do other things like work on his computer, watch movies and even sleep. He asked what cars would be like when they no longer had to meet crash legislation. He wondered what would happen to car design when cars were zero emissions and so no longer needed to comply with emissions legislation.

I guess the legislation will switch to reducing the environmental impact involved in making the car and disposing of it. It is possible that cars in future could become far more mimimal without the need to protect the occupants from collision, reducing environmental impact and making the vehicle more “ideal” in TRIZ terms. It is possible that cars may become more durable and customised to the specific owner’s requirements to reduce energy invested and may even be able to have radical updates for important changes such as new additions to the family, in the same way as houses have extensions added now. The entertainment and comfort elements of the vehicle will need to be optimised from the point of view of environmental impact, perhaps some of this funtionality could be delegated to the surrounding static infrastructure. Combining the future vehicle vision with the ambient intelligence vision of distributed access to context sensitive computer capability and information, I can see a time when I could be travelling through the countryside with a display overlaying the exterior scene and highlighting information specifically for my interest profile. I’ll bet there will still be adverts though. �