Case Based Reasoning and TRIZ : a coupling for Innovative conception in Chemical Engineering

With the evolutions of the surrounding world market, researchers and engineers have to propose technical innovations. Nevertheless, Chemical Engineering community demonstrates a small interest for innovation compared to other engineering fields. In this paper, an approach to accelerate inventive preliminary design for Chemical Engineering is presented. This approach uses Case Based Reasoning (CBR) method to model, to capture, to store and to make available the knowledge deployed during design. CBR is a very interesting method coming from Artificial Intelligence, for routine design. Indeed, in CBR the main assumption is that a new problem of design can be solved with the help of past successful ones. Consequently, the problem solving process is based on past successful solutions therefore the design is accelerated but creativity is limited and not stimulated. Our approach is an extension of the CBR method from routine design to inventive design. One of the main drawbacks of this method is that it is restricted in one particular domain of application. To propose inventive solution, the level of abstraction for problem resolution must be increased. For this reason CBR is coupled with the TRIZ theory (Russian acronym for Theory of solving inventive problem). TRIZ is a problem solving method that increases the ability to solve creative problems thanks to its capacity to give access to the best practices in all the technical domains. The proposed synergy between CBR and TRIZ combines the main advantages of CBR (ability to store and to reuse rapidly knowledge) and those of TRIZ (no trade off during resolution, inventive solutions). Based on this synergy, a tool is developed and a mere example is treated

Managing the trade-off implications of global supply

The cost versus response trade-off is a growing logistics issue due to many markets being increasingly characterized by demand uncertainty and shorter product life cycles. This is exacerbated further with supply increasingly moving to low cost global sources. However, the poor response implications of global supply are often not addressed or even acknowledged when undertaking such decisions. Consequently, various practical approaches to minimising, postponing or otherwise managing the impact of the demand uncertainty are often only adopted retrospectively. Even though such generic solutions are documented through case examples we lack effective tools and concepts to support the proactive identification and resolution of such trade-offs. This paper reports on case-based theory building research, involving three cases from the UK and USA used in developing a conceptual model with associated tools, in support of such a process

Aircraft systems architecting: a functional-logical domain perspective

Presented is a novel framework for early systems architecture design. The framework defines data structures and algorithms that enable the systems architect to operate interactively and simultaneously in both the functional and logical domains. A prototype software tool, called AirCADia Architect, was implemented, which allowed the framework to be evaluated by practicing aircraft systems architects. The evaluation confirmed that, on the whole, the approach enables the architects to effectively express their creative ideas when synthesizing new architectures while still retaining control over the process

Innovative cases of triz application in automotive industry

It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore that cost reduction in product system are not supporting the development of innovation. This contradiction become a great challange for any type of industry, to improve the competitive level. In this research, the focuses on the mechanism of cost reduction using Design To Cost strategy in achieving cost improvment and innovation. The contradiction is solved using Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) that is integrated into Design To Cost Innovation framework. There are two type of cases intorduce in this research that highlight the application and the outcome of TRIZ in Design To Cost framework. From the case studies, the results shows that the magnitude of cost improvement and innovation achieved is more than the application of conventional tools in Design To Cost strategy.This change the limitation of mindset in cost reduction without compromise or trade-off, and open up new possibility of research for cost reduction in processes and services for various application

The Ethical Dilemma of Information Asymmetry in Innovation: Reputation, Investors and Noise in the Innovation Channel.

A sufficient and steady stream of innovations is widely seen as a basis for healthy modern economies. Governments divert substantial resources from other purposes in society to increase innovation. Yet the failure rate among innovative SMEs is high, suggesting that resources are wasted. Avoiding such waste is a challenge for both governments and investors, but also raises a question for the innovative company, namely how to build and fund the\ud enterprise on an ethical basis. The dilemma of giving in to temptations to ‘cut corners’ clearly exists, for example to exploit the inevitable asymmetry of information arising in innovation and potentially deploy this in support of misleading claims about specific capabilities and/or the unjustified creation and exploitation of reputation. This is consistent with Olaf Fisscher’s finding that entrepreneurs starting new ventures tend to exhibit an inherent bias towards compromising their own values in order to succeed at any cost. When the innoSME’s aspirations are unrealistic or the proposed innovations are of marginal value, the ethical issues are broader and extend also to those who are potential financiers. Noting this as a gap in the ethics literature, we argue that the current situation fails to match economic and ethical ideals and that work is needed to develop tools which allow those who provide finance and support for innovation to target it more effectively at those who have a prospect of successfully launching genuine innovations and thus reduce the ‘noise’ in the innovation field

A framework for innovative service design

Drawing on research from design science, marketing and service science, our paper provides an integrated framework for evaluating and directing innovative service design. The main goal of our review is to highlight the strengths of existing frameworks and to suggest how they can be enhanced in combination with design science principles. Based on our review, we propose a new framework for the design of innovative services that integrates several key paradigmatic approaches and identifies fundamental open research questions. Our approach is unique as it combines three service disciplines, namely services marketing, service science, and design science, and provides a new framework that describes step by step the procedure that needs to be taken and the conditions that need to be met for developing innovative services. We believe that providing such a framework is a valuable addition to the literature

Requirements Engineering as Creative Problem Solving: A Research Agenda for Idea Finding

This vision paper frames requirements engineering as a creative problem solving process. Its purpose is to enable requirements researchers and practitioners to recruit relevant theories, models, techniques and tools from creative problem solving to understand and support requirements processes more effectively. It uses 4 drivers to motivate the case for requirements engineering as a creative problem solving process. It then maps established requirements activities onto one of the longest-established creative problem solving processes, and uses these mappings to locate opportunities for the application of creative problem solving in requirements engineering. The second half of the paper describes selected creativity theories, techniques, software tools and training that can be adopted to improve requirements engineering research and practice. The focus is on support for problem and idea finding - two creative problem solving processes that our investigation revealed are poorly supported in requirements engineering. The paper ends with a research agenda to incorporate creative processes, techniques, training and tools in requirements projects

How could the TRIZ tool help continuous improvement efforts of the companies?

This paper objective is to explore TRIZ tool as a tool that could be helpful during Lean implementation, in particular, during the continuous improvement process efforts. Attending to the already published papers regarding Lean and TRIZ, at least since 2004, this synergy is viable and sustainable. This paper presents TRIZ principles and discusses their relation With Lean Production principles. Additionally, presents some TRIZ tools and explain how they can be useful in the context of the methodology in development to be applied in Textile and Clothing Industry.PEst-C/EEI/UI0319/201