Eight fields of MATCEMIB help students to generate more ideas

This paper presents the results of the idea generation experiment that repeats the study originally conducted at RMIT. In order to establish the influence that the experimental treatments make on the number and the breadth of solution ideas proposed by problem solvers with different knowledge levels, students from different years of study were recruited. Ninety students from the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany were divided into three groups. All students were asked to generate ideas on cleaning lime deposits from the inside of a water pipe and were given 16 minutes to record their individual ideas. Students of two experimental groups were shown some words for two minuted each. The Su-Field group was exposed to the eight fields of MATCEMIB. The Random Word group was shown eight random words every two minutes. The Su-Field group outperformed both the Control group and the Random Word group in the number of ideas generated. It was also found that the students from the Su-Field group proposed significantly broader solutions than the students from the Control and Random Word groups. The overall results of the experiment support the conclusions made by the RMIT researchers that simple ideation techniques can significantly improve idea generation and that the systematised Substance-Field Analysis is a suitable heuristic for engineering students

Sustainable Innovation in Process Engineering using Quality Function Deployment Approach and Importance-Satisfaction Analysis of Requirements

Growing demands for cleaner production and higher eco-efficiency in process engineering require a comprehensive analysis of technical and environmental outcomes of customers and society. Moreover, unexpected additional technical or ecological drawbacks may appear as negative side effects of new environ-mentally friendly technologies. The paper conceptualizes a comprehensive ap-proach for analysis and ranking of engineering and ecological requirements in process engineering in order to anticipate secondary problems in eco-design and to avoid compromising the environmental or technological goals. For this purpose, the paper presents a method based on integration of the Quality Func-tion Deployment approach with the Importance-Satisfaction Analysis for the requirements ranking. The proposed method identifies and classifies compre-hensively the potential engineering and eco-engineering contradictions through analysis of correlations within requirements groups such as stakehold-er requirements (SRs) and technical requirements (TRs), and additionally through cross-relationship between SRs and TRs

Innovation Lab: New TRIZ Tools for Fast Idea Triggering

Part 1: TRIZ Improvement: Theory, Methods and ToolsInternational audienceDuring 2017, University of Bergamo and Warrant Innovation Lab have been starting a partnership to diffuse TRIZ in Italian SMEs. They aim to make SMEs perceive TRIZ as a time-saving methodology, the main needing expressed about innovation. The offering is a one-day problem-solving activity that aims at generating conceptual solutions, potentially patentable. First cases highlighted the reformulation was the trickiest phase: the extraction of the high-level technological alternatives cannot be supported by classical TRIZ tools (object-product transformation, ENV model, IFR, resources, evolutive laws, multiscreen, MTS) for both limited time and lacks in TRIZ skills of the customer. The staff overcomes such a double issue pre-processing the initial problem’s information to extract insights from knowledge DBs. The results will be shown as visual-psychological triggers to stimulate the creativity of non-TRIZ-skilled users. The paper will disclose how visual triggers can work and how a triz expert facilitator can create them

Patent Based Method to Evaluate the Market Potential of a Product

Part 1: TRIZ Improvement: Theory, Methods and ToolsInternational audienceWithin TRIZ literature, only a small part is focused on the management of the requirements. In the majority of cases, they are treated at a mere technological level rather than marketing, by taking into account the requirements that have the greatest market potential.According to the market potential technique, in the early stage phases of design, the product to be innovated is divided into a list of different properties that will be assessed individually in terms of importance and satisfaction. In order to support the evaluation made by product experts (R&D Team and Marketing Team), a search for knowledge must be carried out. This involves, for example, the research in each requirement for information contained in brochures, commercial catalogs, patents literature and scientific articles with the aim of extracting trends, statistics, emerging technologies and unresolved problems. This procedure requires time and a large economic investment, especially if integrated with market research, often costly and time consuming. To overcome these limitations, the novelty proposed in this article consists in a method to automate the estimation of the importance of each requirement, or at least those for which information is available in the various document sources.An exemplary case dealing with an aerogel panel for civil application is proposed, stressing the geographical area in such a way as to define the investment and how it integrates into the potential market

Sustainable Education in Inventive Problem Solving with TRIZ and Knowledge-Based Innovation at Universities

Accelerated transformation of the society and industry through digitalization, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies has intensified the need for university graduates that are capable of rapidly finding breakthrough solutions to complex problems, and can successfully implement innovation concepts. However, there are only few universities making significant efforts to comprehensively incorporate creative and systematic tools of TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) and KBI (knowledge-based innovation) into their degree structure. Engineering curricula offer little room for enhancing creativity and inventiveness by means of discipline‐specific subjects. Moreover, many educators mistakenly believe that students are either inherently creative, or will inevitably obtain adequate problem-solving skills as a result of their university study. This paper discusses challenges of intelligent integration of TRIZ and KBI into university curricula. It advocates the need for development of standard guidelines and best-practice recommendations in order to facilitate sustainable education of ambitious, talented, and inventive specialists. Reflections of educators that teach TRIZ and KBI to students from mechanical, electrical, process engineering, and business administration are presented