What is TRIZ?

TRIZ was born in the cold-war era Russia. It is a systematic innovation methodology for developing creative solutions.

Here is an example situation… There is a problem when using artificial diamonds for tool making: the existence of invisible fractures.

Traditional diamond cutting methods often resulted in new fractures which did not show up until the diamond was in use. What was needed was a way to split the diamond crystals along their natural fractures without causing additional damage.

In the food industry, there is a method to split green peppers and remove the seeds for canning. In this process, peppers are placed in a hermetic chamber to which air pressure is increased to 8 atmospheres. The peppers shrink and fracture at the stem. Then the pressure is rapidly dropped causing the peppers to burst at the weakest point and the seed pod to be ejected.

A similar technique applied to diamond cutting resulted in the crystals splitting along their natural fracture lines with no additional damage.

 
 

This is one example of many problems solved by using TRIZ: A potential solution might already exist, but often psychological inertia prevents us from discovering the ones in a different field of discipline or from being creative enough to see a potential of existing knowledge to a new situation.

TRIZ Tutorial

In this hands-on workshop, you will discover how to apply classical TRIZ methods to challenging customer needs in the changing business environment, both for services and for products. You will learn to classify your problem, and then select the right TRIZ tool for the problem and develop powerful breakthrough solutions.

The key areas for discussion will include:

  • ideal final result;

  • use of resources;

  • contradiction analysis;

  • the separation principles for eliminating inherent contradictions; and

  • the 40 principles for eliminating tradeoffs.

This tutorial is for anybody with an interest in solving difficult problems, regardless of his/her level of QFD knowledge.

While the basics of TRIZ is introduced in the QFD Black Belt® training, the TRIZ Tutorial offers more detailed, step-by-step instructions and includes hands-on application practice. Interested parties are invited to contact the QFD Institute.