Commentary by Ellen Domb

ETRIA - Day 3

Day 2 concluded with a delightful dinner show—two “physics professors” who entertained and educated the audience with a fire tornado, bubbles that sink (breathe SF6 before blowing bubbles) and a fast-moving tour through tricks and games from buoyancy to Boyle’s law.

Day 3 opened with a keynote address by Greg Yezersky, explaining the General Theory of Innovation, which is the result of his research over 20 years, starting with TRIZ and adding his extensive experience. Greg has an extensive website (www.ipinetwork.com) with tutorials on the method. The audience appreciated his presentation several ways—Greg’s presentation of some of the standard TRIZ concepts is very helpful (Where do contradictions come from? Why does the law of ideality exist?) and TRIZ advocates for both companies and universities got many new examples of the critical need for innovation methodology.

Amir Roggel and Nikolai Khomenko

The program committee did an admirable job reshuffling the program, since several speakers did not show up (Ellen’s editorial: Unless you have a communicable disease, or unless your family has a crisis, you should show up. If you submitted the paper to the conference, you made a commitment to the audience to present it and discuss it!!!! Saying, “Sorry, I have a business opportunity,” is disrespectful of your colleagues—we all gave up time and business opportunities to be here.)

“TRIZ for Reverse Market Research” was presented by Bert Miecznik and Markus Glaser of the Wittenstein AG, makers of many medical technology products. We hope to publish this paper in the TRIZ Journal in the near future—they present both their application of TRIZ methods to understand all of the customers’ needs and product features at an abstract level and then show a case study of using TRIZ for product development and TRIZ-guided patent searches to understand the competitive environment. The product is a bone growth system, so that children who have had bone cancers removed don’t have to have repeated surgeries to replace bone substitutes as they grow. The double use of TRIZ advances both theory and practice.

Joe Miller and I did a study of the use of the Complete Technical System to define the problem to be solved—usually a big stumbling block for beginners. The presentation at ETRIA was aimed at other TRIZ teachers, so that they can help their beginners. The paper will be in next month’s TRIZ Journal, but reading it is not as much fun as being at the meeting and discussing the system with other teachers and practioners!

To conclude the morning I went to “The application of TRIZ methodology in iron & steel making industry” by HeeChoon Lee of the Intellectual Property Group of the Posco Company of Korea. They combined TRIZ with Six Sigma analysis to eliminate the problem of the buildup of harmful deposits in the gas transport system of coal oven gas, which is used as an energy source. The case study demonstrates the use of Su-Field analysis, the 76 Standard Solutions, and the index of scientific effects in a very complex situation.

Claudia Hentschel, Hansjurgen Linde and Gunther Herr

After lunch, I hears about the development of a new artificial intelligence based software by Tiit Tiidemann from Estonia, “PRIZ” = “Program for solving engineering tasks.” This is not yet integrated with TRIZ, but it points out situations where TRIZ should be applied.

Simon Dewulf did a dynamic and enthusiastic presentation in the last session of the afternoon showing some of the new patent analysis techniques that he is using for situations where people have resources and want new uses for them. (We have this machine—what else can we do with this?) He has also done extensive work on functional and input/output indexing for the invention list on the Creax “More Inspiration” website. (Free utility, start at www.creax.com.)

Gaetano Cascini chaired the membership meeting that concluded ETRIA—members should go to www.etria.net for the agenda and business meeting details. The good news for everyone is that the 2008 meeting is already planned for Nov. 5-8, hosted by the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Feedback and comments on these daily reports from both Monterrey last week and Frankfurt this week? Please use the comment utility at the end of this column, send me an e-mail (ellendomb@earthlink.net) or post in the discussion forum. Thanks!

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