The 'law of requisite variety' may assist climate change negotiations:a review of the Kyoto and Durban meetings

Ashby wrote about cybernetics, during which discourse he described a Law that attempts to resolve difficulties arising in complex situations – he suggested using variety to combat complexity. In this paper, we note that the delegates to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Kyoto, 1997, were offered a ‘simplifying solution’ to cope with the complexity of discussing multiple pollutants allegedly contributing to ‘climate change’. We assert that the adoption of CO2eq has resulted in imprecise thinking regarding the ‘carbon footprint’ – that is, ‘CO2’ – to the exclusion of other pollutants. We propose, as Ashby might have done, that the CO2eq and other factors within the ‘climate change’ negotiations be disaggregated to allow careful and specific individual solutions to be agreed on each factor. We propose a new permanent and transparent ‘action group’ be in charge of agenda setting and to manage the messy annual meetings. This body would be responsible for achieving accords at these annual meetings, rather than forcing this task on national hosts. We acknowledge the task is daunting and we recommend moving on from Ashby's Law to Beer's Viable Systems approach

A Feedback on an Industrial Application of the FORMAT Methodology

Part 7: TRIZ Combined with other ApproachesInternational audienceOne of the main issues of industrial product evolution planning is the current state of the art, related to the product itself, its market competitors, and also the available resources that can become parts of the future product. Moreover, to plan evolution, it is required to well understand how the performance of the product will be evaluated, on a future market, and surely it won’t be the same performance criteria as today habits.This issue has been tackled and defined as Analysis of Initial Situation. A combination of TRIZ based approaches and Design of Experiments has been defined to clarify the problem to be solved. But all these approaches are dedicated to analyze today product and to choose the prior problem to be considered, but these methods have not been defined to analyze long-term evolution planning of products.For this long-term planning, a method, FORMAT, has been developed and proposed. The purpose of this article is to describe the application of this methodology on an industrial case, to plan the evolution of kitchen hoods. The article will state the different methods to perform the Analysis of Initial Situation but also the benefits and the difficulties of FORMAT application

Is TRIZ an Ecodesign method?

Several Ecodesign methods can be found in literature, though none has ever really established itself industrially. On the other hand there is a plethora of methods for problem solving which do not necessarily produce greener solutions. Among these, the most promising is the TRIZ methodology for inventive problem solving. TRIZ is not meant for Ecodesign, but recently more and more eco-applications can be found in the literature. This paper aims at providing a new interpretive key of the TRIZ methodology from an environmental point of view, to distinguish which tools and principles are readily applicable to Ecodesign from those that need to be customized. A detailed analysis of the best-known tools of the methodology applied to Ecodesign is presented, as well as how they have been integrated into a single operational tool called i-Tree

Automatic Extraction and Ranking of Systems of Contradictions Out of a Design of Experiments

Part 7: TRIZ Combined with other ApproachesInternational audienceThis paper shows to what extent data used in design optimization process and TRIZ based models of contradictions can benefit from each other. New design often starts by optimizing existing systems by experimental and numerical means. This approach requires building a model linking on the one hand, a set of Action Parameters; and on the other hand, Evaluation Parameters measuring the quality of a solution. When none of the solutions satisfy the objectives, a redesign of the system is required. Our hypothesis in this paper is that the analysis of experimental or simulation data, can be used as input to automatically extract systems of contradictions, and moreover that it can help to make a ranking of these systems of contradictions.In the article 3 ways to extract, out of Design of Experiments, and to prioritize Generalized Systems of Contradictions will be presented. These methods will be illustrated throughout a case study related to a cutting process

PLM in the food industry: An explorative empirical research in the Italian market

The Food and Beverage (F&B) industry has a unique role in all countries’ economies because it is essential to people lives. In this paper, the focus will be on the Italian food industry, one of the main food producer. This study will present the first results of a wider research that has as main aim to understand how PLM is adopted in the food industry, its limits and its challenges. Indeed, the first results show the level of knowledge of PLM systems in this sector, both from the literature and from the market point of view. Furthermore, the paper shows the results of a preliminary empirical research, made through several case studies, on the role of PLM in the product development process of the food industry