Commentary by Ellen Domb

Iberoamerican Innovation Congress Days 3 & 4

The 2008 participants represented Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, US, France, and the Mexican states of Veracruz, Jalisco, Nueva Leon, Mexico, Michoacan, Puebla, Queretaro, Distrito Federal, and Tabasco and there have been past participants from Zacatecas and Baja California Norte in Mexico, and Argentina, Brazil, UK, Iraq, Korea, and Spain.

Photo: R. Marin, Z. Royzen and J. Hipple with mariachis at the reception on day 2.

I will continue to report on my observation of the conference, with short notes on the papers. For the complete program, see http://www.ametriz.com/schedule_third_conference_triz.php.

Noel Leon presented the paper that he wrote with Humberto Aguayo Téllez on the use of Genetic Algorithms with TRIZ. The complementary elements of the two methods have been combined into Evolutionary Conceptual Design. Particularly, the use of biological evolutionary mechanisms in genetic algorithms and of technical evolutionary concepts in TRIZ, were particularly fruitful. They found that the two disciplines had developed similar concepts of ideality and the need to abandon trade-offs to reach the ideal final result (using TRIZ vocabulary) The examples that impressed the audience were both concrete and fanciful: The development of a design for a forged steel machine part that meets multiple simultaneous constraints, and the development of a simulated multi-terrain walking robot. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=oquKOVfzGfk&NR=1 to watch the robot learn! (I like when it starts experimenting with jumping instead of walking –TRIZ ideas of using another dimension to solve the problem!) Later in the day Cesar Villareal showed a case study of design of vertical wind turbines using the combination of the genetic algorithms with TRIZ to solve very difficult technical problems that will be essential for energy production.

Edgardo Cordoba presented the work that he did with Angélica Arellano Palacios on the application of TRIZ in human relations. They have worked with individual, management /administrative and cultural problems, and found that TRIZ makes significant and useful contributions in all areas. In particular, organization leaders increased their creativity and demonstrated ideal solutions at a level that had been inconceivable before their use of TRIZ. Tools that were most useful to the leaders were multi-windows, smart little people, and dimension/time/cost. They looked at the leadership dimensions: transactional, transformational, situational, and visionary, and found that leaders need similar skills in all areas, but they need to know how to apply those skills in a flexible way.

Luz Marina Torres Piñeros presented the work she developed with Oscar Fernando Castellanos Domínguez and others at the National University of Colombia. They studied the relationship between "technological intelligence" and the decision making process in countries ranging from Colombia to India to Ecuador to the US. She has extensive data showing how the state of 3 different industries (tobacco, cacao, and finque) improved as the understanding of the system and the technology developed.

Hilda Del Sagrario Vallín Sánchez and her colleagues Sergio Gerardo Mañón Espinon and Álvaro R. Pedroza Zapata from ITESO (Institute for Advanced Study in the West) in Tlaquepaque, a suburb of Guadalajara, showed a detailed case study of innovative development of battery technology through use of multi-parameter designed experiments.

Avraam Serediski is well-known to the TRIZ Journal readers. He participated in two of the projects that were reported at the conference. He and Gabriel González Molina and

Fidel García Gonzalez (who presented the paper) studied >20,000 graduating students from universities, and received surprisingly negative answers to the question of how the students will impact society. They have formulated a plan which is now in active deployment in the state of Puebla, associated with several universities, for entrepreneurship education and for business incubators, to encourage the students and others to work together for new enterprises.

TRIZ Journal readers are familiar with problems in the construction industry. The conference had 3 very exciting papers on the use of TRIZ to solve problems in materials development for construction to improve strength and life of materials and to reduce cost (both for the producer and for the user, and for society by reducing energy costs.)

1. Sergio Uribe from Cemex showed the TRIZ adoption process, and how Cemex is combining TRIZ with training, software, support, and management systems to increase adoption and accelerate project completion throughout the company
2. J. C. Rubio Ávalos and his colleagues at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and with the support of government agencies used TRIZ for breakthrough improvements in phosforescent concrete, flexible window materials, strong membranes, and inorganic foams. In each case they used very basic TRIZ principles (such as the 40 principles and the separation principles) plus the concept of ideality, to make extreme improvements.
3. Alfonso Moreno Salazar and his colleagues in Guadalajara reported on developments in the use of foam panels for both home and industrial construction. The new techniques make very energy-efficient buildings possible with much less labor and use of raw materials, using classical contradiction resolution, applied in a multi-parameter environment.

Professor Rafael Oropeza Monterrubio both entertained and educated the audience—as the last speaker before lunch he had the challenge of keeping people engaged! His study of the failures of leadership in traditional organizations and his recommendations for structural changes, based on the application of TRIZ to management problems, were very well received.

Laura Ponce Garcia presented an extensive study of the opportunities for improvement in the hospitality industry, mostly focused on hotels, and the many possibilities made possible by the methods of understanding of customers' needs and the use of information technology.

Christian Signoret & Avraam Serediski (Mexico and France) revived one of the TRIZ methods developed in the mid-1980s to increase the Ideality of a system: the Integration of Alternative Systems. The process was illustrated with an agricultural case study and a student project in rocket design. It produces very dramatic results very quickly, if the practioner has a good understanding of the relationships of the functions and subsystems of the system that is being improved.

Guillermo Cortes Robles Institute Technologica in Orizaba, Veracruz, MX, did two presentations on the use of Alternative Failure Determination to increase safety of industrial machinery. They were very elegant case studies, using the resources of the system to solve the problem, once the problem was understood. His data on the need to improve industrial safety made a strong case.

Pedro Sariego P showed 3 cases from the Chilean mining industry The case studies illustrated specific TRIZ methods, with considerable Six Sigma thinking in the identification of the problems:

1. Elimination of a contradiction: How to position the elecrolytic process in the chain of cathodes in hydrometalurgical processing of copper
2. Su-Field analysis: Problem of an elbow in the discharge of a lime production process
3. ARIZ: Removing large rocks that get stuck in the jaws of a crushing machine in a copper processing system.

Javier Rivera Ramírez discussed his work with Rosario Vidal Nadal on methods of managing innovation in an environment where science, technology and design have evolved without always being focused on the needs of the customer, and pointed out possible ways to manage both the people and the processes to enhance innovation.

Edgardo Cordoba's fascinating presentation on the seventh generation of quality, presented as a new paradigm of TRIZ, had much new data that traced the evolution of the quality control, quality improvement, and pro-active quality movements, and suggested that the predictive properties of TRIZ would contribute to the future of quality in many ways.

Day 4 was devoted to tutorials. I did a half-day workshop on how to teach TRIZ, focusing on understanding the learning process before trying to do any teaching. Jack Hipple did a full-day program on the integration of TRIZ with many other tools and methods, and Noel Leon did an intensive half-day session for TRIZ beginners. I missed the party that the 4 organizations that were sharing the Expo center for the week of innovation presented on Saturday night (had to run to the airport) but I hope that this report shows the organizing committee of AMETRIZ that their efforts were appreciated!

Photo: Rafael Fargas, Noel Leon, and keynote speakers Andrew Brown and Mansour Ashtiani.

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