TRIZ training

Frame a technical problem without presupposing its solution, and build the models that open the solution space (steps 1 & 2).

• The value TRIZ adds to the innovation process: objectives, place within design, founding postulates and levels of inventiveness.
• How TRIZ differs from conventional creativity tools: an engineering science founded on the analysis of millions of patents.
• Framing the problem: the Ideal Final Result (rejecting compromise from the outset) and resource identification (substances, fields, space, time, information).
• Modelling the system: physical analysis and cause-effect chains to diagnose the root cause.
• Formulating technical and physical contradictions; Su-Field analysis and inventive standards; the ten-question algorithm; validation criteria for a problem formulation.

Practical case — analyse a real problem, model the technical system and lay out its contradictions.

Turn the problem models into solution concepts using TRIZ's databases of generic solutions (step 3).

• The 40 inventive principles and the contradiction matrix: translate the contradiction into the 39 parameters, read the Altshuller matrix, turn a generic principle into a concrete solution.
• Physical contradictions and the separation principles: in time, in space, on condition and by change of system level.
• Smirnov's algorithm and the inventive standards; resource analysis and mobilisation.
• The technical-effects database and the pointers method: reach solutions from other domains, beyond the team's immediate expertise.

Practical case — resolve the previous day's contradiction with the Altshuller matrix, then with the separation methods and Smirnov's algorithm.

Bring in the advanced tools and the effects database, break psychological inertia, then rank the concepts and build the action plan (steps 3 & 4).

• Breaking psychological inertia: DTC operators (Dimension–Time–Cost), the golden-fish operator, the Smart Little People method.
• Rank, decide and open up: prioritise concepts (feasibility × expected performance), formalise a concept book and an action plan.
• Introduction to the laws of technical system evolution (S-curve, ideality, completeness of parts; coordination, controllability, dynamisation, transition to the super-system) and the nine-windows technique.
• Wrap-up: TRIZ's preferred fields of application and a review against the participants' initial expectations.

Practical case — apply the Smart Little People method to surface unconventional solution paths.