Commentary by Guest Commentator

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.----

The Final Day.

Well it is over and what a conference it has been. Before you all rush over next year, let me caution you that most of the presentations are obviously in Japanese. The organisers have though gone to a huge trouble to provide simultaneously presented PowerPoint’s in English with a printed copy of all slides or papers. Questions are also in Japanese with an impressive effort being made by the organisers themselves to translate/ summarise questions.

The day kicked off with Simon Dewulf (MD, CREAX: www.creax.com) giving the second invited paper entitled ‘Variation of properties for new or improved functions.’ In a highly visual presentation (with actual product examples), Simon introduced ‘properties’ and then variation of properties for new function. What was interesting was his property function matrix (particularly when patent information was added). This led on to introducing his company’s DIVA software and its use to aid innovation.

I suppose I should not write about my own paper which followed, but as no one else is easily available, please excuse me if l just mention some key points. The paper on ‘Developing highly effective engineers’ was aimed at giving managers some reasons why they should invest in TRIZ. It looked at the very few papers that have been published in this area and so had to resort to broader research on (highly) effective people. Taking key points from these works, psychology and creative problem solving, it tabulated TRIZ tools against potential for ‘breaking mindsets’ and tabulated the identified attributes of highly effective people against TRIZ tools. I hope by these initial ideas that over worked engineers and their managers will appreciate that TRIZ is ‘not just another tool’ to be learnt like 6Sigma, QFD, Functional Analysis, FTA, FMEA, Taguchi, VA/VE, TQM, Lean, etc.

I like case studies and this conference had them. It was not just general cases from study groups like the Japan VE Association (all participants from industry), but included real research cases e.g., Hitachi and developing hard disk drives. Obviously the ‘patent’ part was left out but the TRIZ development steps helped show TRIZ potential. After lots of technical slides, my favourite was the cartoon slide which said ‘Not frequency – its gain.’ I.e., TRIZ had broken through the mind sets of the different groups of engineers working on this project. Well done Hitachi and the other company’s who showed us real cases. Let us hope others in the west can start doing this instead of hiding behind ‘competitive advantage and non disclosure of everything,’ thinking.

Well done again to the conference management team: an excellent job. Any one who can attract about 150 participants from industry out of the 200 participants is going to get TRIZ noticed in their country. Watch out the rest of us!

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.----

Well the second day of this immaculately organised conference has finished. Again, 202 participants keen to hear about TRIZ!

Larry Ball (Honeywell and well known in western TRIZ circles) kicked off the day at 9am with his invited talk on ‘TRIZ Algorithms.’ He gave a very clear and practical presentation on causal analysis, which included a case study. After a couple of other good presentations we had eight 3 minute introductions to the poster session. This worked well to maximise participation/ papers and topic breadth. After lunch we circled around the posters in small groups, with each presenter giving parallel introductions to their poster. The inevitable bell keeping the conference working like clockwork!

I gave one of the two parallel session talks for Darrell Mann (www.systematic-innovation.com) who had to unluckily cancel at the last minute. The talk on ‘Systematic Innovation for Business & Management: Experiences 1994 – 2007’ went very well (which surprised me as I was not sure of the level of comprehension), with good feedback and questions from a number of delegates. Whew! This then took us up to 6pm for another short break followed by a buffet dinner. Again I was pleasantly surprised as this had been labelled as buffet dinner and communications’ and worked very well as the two hours disappeared with so many people stopping to chat and often to recommend some unrecognisable delicacy. I hope I can stick this pace for the last day!

The full programme can be found at: http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/elinksref/eJapanTRIZ-CB/e3rdTRIZSymp2007Pre.html

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.---------

I’ve arrived here for my first visit to Japan. I am so grateful that it is ‘cold’ so that I have time to acclimatise. Fortunately I was given good instructions as to getting to the conference as the number of choices in travelling through Tokyo by train is bewildering e.g., the Tokyo main station is on four levels!

The conference is impressive with 200 delegates this year (150 last year) and most from industry. I find it embarrassing at the level of company interest here compared to my experiences in U.S. (brief) and Europe. The delegates also are of senior level (i.e., deputy or even general manager( from the people I have talked to so far.

The talks on the first day have been good and I must praise the organisers for translating all the slides and dual projecting the PowerPoints. An interesting perspective came from Mr. Hayashi (Hitachi) who was reporting introducing TRIZ across the organisation. Feedback had shown that Taguchi was found by employees to be the easiest to use followed by QFD. TRIZ was reported to be the most difficult to start, but the speculation was that this was due to the fact that there were (until now) no conferences to which people could attend. It was thus thought that people starting now may find learning TRIZ much easier.

Another talk was by Mr. Okuzumi (General Manger, Toshiba Innovation Promotion Division). After giving a company overview, he looked at all the innovation methods and activities used in the company and reported how TRIZ was finding a place. Change was referred to a number of times with obvious senior management backing and the emphasis was on innovation management c.f. management of innovation. Toshiba has an i3 (i cubed) cross functional approach to innovation, comprising of process innovation in sales & marketing, production & procurement, research & development. What was also interesting was the use of words such as how innovation is defined in the company, from ‘a small innovation on the spot’ to ‘ the maximum approach that increases wealth creation capabilities by doing things in a completely new way to maximise profits.’

I look forward to the next day.

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Dr. Paul Filmore has been teaching creativity, personal, professional, entrepreneurial and research skills for over 10 years, at the University of Plymouth, UK. At present he ‘introduces’ TRIZ to over 100 first year engineering degree students and 100 technology Masters (postgraduate) students.

Paul runs an innovation consultancy ‘The Insight Centre’ where TRIZ and other systematic problem solving skills predominate and have recently been augmented by research and practical understanding of how disruptive innovation thinking can help to further break mindsets. Paul can be reached by email at pfilmore@plymouth.ac.uk.

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