Главная    Конференция    TRIZ in Europe: development and problems. Notes from the conference ETRIA TRIZ future-2005
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TRIZ in Europe: development and problems.
Notes from the conference ETRIA TRIZ future-2005

B. Axelrod , Algorithm Ltd., Russia

mailto:Boris.Axelrod@ime.spb.ru

General impressions

On November 15 - 18, 2005 in Graz, Austria, there was held an international business meeting TRIZ future -2005 - ETRIA conference (European TRIZ Association, http://www.etria.net). First of all I would like to mention the magnificent organization of the conference. The conference Organizing Committee secured the feeling of comfort for all participants and managed to create genuine warm atmosphere. The understanding of this finally and fully occurred to me only after the conference, that is why I want to compare the style of my colleagues with "low-pressure, but constant care". It became apparent even before the conference, when they managed partially to cut down the expenditures of the CIS participants, and as far as I can judge, there were no faults at all. Surely there is a great organizational work behind all this as well as a high cultural level.

The conference was aimed at the development of the European TRIZ-community. At the same time, a lot of participants are competitors as well as colleagues. It would seem a contradiction. But this contradiction was fully solved by the conference organizers headed by J. Jantschgi (Austria). Extremely friendly atmosphere of the meeting gave the feeling of cooperation and no wonder it was actively supported by everyone. The MATRIZ delegation headed by M. Barkan (USA) added its friendly positive contribution.

The main conclusion: the conference proved that the European TRIZ community has been actively gaining strength with its professional level constantly growing. This community is perspective because it can see the direction of its development; its members are not isolated and are oriented to practical application. ETRIA is open for cooperation and the ETRIA management demonstrates clear vision of main problems.

Succinctly on papers

It was very interesting to learn about the other colleagues' problems and concerns. It might be that the objective competitive situation resulted in the fact that rare speech went into instrumental details. On the other hand, new methodological approaches do not appear often. From this point of view, among the papers devoted to new methodologies, ones given by K.Lee (Republic of Korea) and B.Axelrod (Russia) were the most open.

Nevertheless, the pool or papers was pretty good, and the majority of reports were rather interesting because of a) the nature of the problems mentioned - it is important to understand colleagues' concerns, and b) the contents of presented results of methodological research.

L.Smith and S.Litvin (both from USA) in their key reports covered in one's own way the main problems which TRIZ movement encounters in the process of its development and expansion. The first reporter presented very interesting analysis of TRIZ general problems and the second one analyzed more "down to earth" problems, which are closer to practical work. L.Lelait (Germany) showed that his group has developed a fundamental approach to research that is based on the prediction of the consumers' necessities development. This approach gave rather tangible results in the form of effective patented solutions in the high-tech sphere. Unfortunately no clear answer was given to the question about criteria for conclusions based on the forecast. Apropos, the correct forming of criteria is probably one of the key problems of using various TRIZ methodologies in general.

The report of M.Falch and W.Brabek (Austria) aroused intense interest. First, the combination of TRIZ and other methodologies of activating the creative process, and then, use of S-curve analysis for aim targeting were interesting. The company's achievements in business and engineering are quite impressive. At the same time, it seems that their magnificent results are achieved by employment of quite limited set of TRIZ tools. In particular, it is most likely that the colleagues could do without much work with contradictions and some other commonly used approaches. If it is true, some interesting conclusions (not necessarily critical!) can be made then. But this is a topic for another paper.

Like the above-mentioned authors, S. Luger and his coauthors (Austria) received hearty welcome from the audience. It was pleasant to see genuinely beautiful inventive solutions (the cable connector was a subject). Key approaches of this group are detailed work with contradictions in combination with various methods of creativity process activation. The group also clearly showed the utmost importance of the financial and organizational factors. To solve this problem quite significant manpower and considerable period of time were given. Their persistence in achieving aims together with creative enthusiasm gave impressing results. By the quantity of the person-months spent, this work is very close to the projects that ALGORITHM Company (Russia) does.

The great impression was made by the K.Lеe report (Republic of Korea). It was one of few reports that were genuinely dedicated to new methodologies. Professor Lee demonstrated rare example of effective synthesis of scientifically applicable (axiomatic design), TRIZ and other approaches.

Other representatives of Korea - J-H.Kim and Y-J.Kang - also showed successful synthesis of exact sciences and TRIZ by combining TRIZ approaches with the numerical analysis and having backed up their methodology with a concrete example of its application. In fact the optimization of the obtained solution using mathematical modeling is not a principally new approach, but it is important to note general completeness of the solution and the consistent orientation to the real final result. The solvers' team obviously needs certain resources in addition to purposefulness, of course.

Some very important and complicated problems were analyzed by G.Schuh, M.Grawatch и M.Wellensiek (Germany) - the appraisal of new technologies potential. This topic is certainly too large and multiple-valued to be clarified in one paper, but the authors showed deep and many-sided approach. The report aroused quite a lot of questions. It would be very interesting to continue the discussion with the authors.

The paper by B.Axelrod (Russia) may give rise to some discussion, which is usual for this author, because of the novelty of ideas presented. It was interesting not only because of a methodology that is claimed to differ significantly from the usual function-oriented search; but the fact of backing it up with a concrete technical solution deserves attention.

From the methodological standpoint, the approach to performing the chain analysis of the undesired effects, which directly takes us to the root conflicts, was presented in vivid and convenient form by V.Souchkov (the Netherlands).

Two serious reports which gave the feeling of serious practical back-up were completely dedicated to the forecasting. These were reports made by D.Kucharavy (France) and P.Chuksin (Russia). It is the practical direction of the works that draws attention, even though they cover such hardly tangible matters.

Very important topic was presented by G.Cascini with coauthors (Italy) - conflicts appearing in module systems, and ways of resolving these conflicts.

The cost estimation in TRIZ procedures, which is always of vital importance, was touched upon by E.Domb (USA).

V.Krasnoslobodtsev (USA) gave an interesting paper with regard to the consistent classical use of TRIZ (conflict formulation, analysis and solving). The number of solutions for the vacuum cleaner of new generation has been embodied in the real product, which is the best criterion for the result assessment. This work demonstrated that, in real life, functionality increase might have the crucial if not the only importance as compare with the problem of ideality. In particular, this occurs when creating elite (very expensive) products.

A.Kynin and coauthors (Republic of Korea) showed the actual applicability of "smart materials", which might look surprising.

J.Pfister (Germany) informed us about the systemic application of various methodologies, including TRIZ, Six-Sigma and others.

The application of semantic processors to searching solutions was touched upon in number of reports. Two different approaches were demonstrated by P.Schweizer (Switzerland), employing the program GoldFire (IMCorp, USA) and R.Nani (Italy), who used opportunities available in commercial data bases. Undoubtedly, semantic processing of texts has large future prospects. However the degree of effectiveness of the existing programs is not clear yet.

It is important to point out the steady interest to creating and employment of various program products worked out for innovative processes support. Not accidentally A. Zusman and B.Zlotin (USA) have also concentrated their efforts in this direction. There is no doubt that such programs facilitate the work of TRIZ consultants and solvers. But it is very difficult to appraise the degree of such facilitation. Unfortunately it is impossible to make valid comparison of the effectiveness of existing programs' employment now.

Rich report by S.Litvin (USA) touched on a subject of a globally new direction developed by Gen3Partners (USA) - consulting methodology that takes into account the interrelation of business and technology problems. The reporter paid attention to the number of new developments and namely, TRIZ benchmarking, combined analysis by the Trends of Engineering System Evolution and the market, and the most important, the methodology of the main functional parameters analysis (Main Functional Parameters of Value, MFPV).

In general methodological aspect, Ikovenko (USA) efficiently reminded the audience of the fact that all the rules used in TRIZ, including standards, function in statistical sense. In other words, it is quite possible to reach the result in a way contradicting some of rules. It is important not to fall into dogmas!

The format of this essay makes it impossible to mention all the reports, the majority of which really enriched TRIZ. We have to leave out some interesting poster reports, among them works of S-M.Cretu (Romania), N.Feygenson (Russia) and others. The topic of separate issue could be the number of interesting speeches devoted to the various training and learning methods. But even the brief excursus showed the high level of the participants.

Some criticism

It is very difficult to criticize such a well-organized conference, but I am forced to by the style.

Unfortunately there were few participants from Russia, the Ukraine and Byelorussia who were not supported by large firms. Financial and language problems are the main reasons for that. It must be said that ETRIA made a lot to facilitate their arrival. But that probably was not enough. There is a contradiction here, which can be considered by the Organizing Committee of TRIZfuture-2006: the majority of the CIS representatives has much more straitened circumstances than their western colleagues, and moreover the trip from Russia and especially from the Far East is considerably more expensive then from the neighboring countries. It might be worth thinking of individual approach, which in the ETRIA's interests could objectively take into consideration the quality of the papers and language problems. New talents are needed. Besides, the language knowledge should become one of the key factors too; otherwise there is no possibility for communication, which the TRIZfuture conferences are aimed at.

There was a disastrous lack of time for discussion. A lot of questions sometimes arose after a report, and the assessment of its practical value was difficult to do without getting answers.

TRIZ problems in Europe and worldwide

The crucial issue for TRIZ and TRIZ community was touched by the president of ETRIA D.Cavalucci (France): How to make TRIZ recognized as a science by academic organizations with the aim of facilitating TRIZ expansion in the world. Such an approach inevitably resulted in discussion of the issue of a ratio between "science" and "art" in TRIZ. To some extent S.Litvin (USA) and B.Axelrod (Russia) opposed; they spoke of prematurity of the stated problem, based on different standpoints. W.Altenstrasser (Austria) added that in the long run TRIZ recognition depends on its success in the industry. D.Cavalucci insisted that recognizing TRIZ as a science, if it is achieved a status of a wide-spread view, would have great significance. Well, the future will settle an affair.

In my opinion, there are a lot of other practical and strategic problems.

For example, some specialists consciously or unconsciously restrict themselves down to 40 principles, and standard solutions are as often heard. The common place is the analyzing and solving contradictions. It is pleasant to see that analysis of the cause-effect chains and S-curves have been widely implemented. However very little was said about application of the contemporary, more specialized and more instrumental (though more complicated) methodologies. It is obvious that we will encounter the problem of diversification of the pool of practical tools for quite a long period of time. The most considerable toolkit here belongs to Algorithm (Russia), Gen3Partners (USA) and Ideation International (USA). However some colleagues from Europe and Asia make efforts to include some of new methodologies in their arsenal. It may be possible that we will see it during the TRIZfuture-2006.

It is surprising that the problems of creativity proper and psychological methods for its stimulation are rarely mentioned in reports not connected with training methodologies.

In spite of the obvious progress of the European branch of TRIZ, we have to state that many of the most interesting reports were of non-European origin. It leaves an impression that the pace of progress of methodologies in the European region is lower then in other ones. This might be the most serious challenge ETRIA faces.

Some trends and results

It is important to mention one more thing. Initially, the main topic of the conference was supposed to be the training problems - the methodologies of TRIZ training and educational methodologies with the use of TRIZ. However in fact the majority of reports covered consulting business and practical TRIZ application in the industry. The Organizing Committee became oriented in main contemporary developmental trends of ETRIA as well as TRIZ in general. The reports may be divided into four groups by subject: concrete methodologies, general problems of TRIZ development, results of work of some firms or TRIZ groups, and training. All the reports from the first three groups were focused on the issues of the practical use of TRIZ in the sci-tech areas.

Many participants reported that among the problems they solve, there are problems in business and marketing and not only in technology. At this, serious progress in this direction could be seen only with the Gen3Partners (the report by S.Litvin). This is quite understandable: the company has essentially larger opportunities to attract business-experts than others and, what is less obvious, it has experience in labor management for them. However all active players in the TRIZ consulting and problem solving field are moving in this direction.

The amount of innovation-oriented program products gradually grows. Sooner or later, it will become crucial and then we shall have really professional and effective soft. But only the specialized soft companies, implementing effective methodological approaches, could produce it.

Everybody was impressed by the success of the Asian colleagues and in particular from the Republic of Korea, by the quantity of participants, reports and their level. The demonstration of a small fragment of the Samsung Corporation training course added to that impression. It seems that big European and American companies should catch up with it, until it does not become too late.

The Conference produced quite positive impression by a lot of reasons:

  • Clear demonstration of the TRIZ development process;
  • The variety of problems under consideration;
  • High level of reports;
  • The practical orientation of most of the participants;
  • Originality of many works on training and education;
  • The variety of opinions, on the one hand, and community of interest on the other;
  • Friendly atmosphere;
  • Very good organization.


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