USIT Approach for Compact Umbrella (Nakamura et al., 2008) (Introduction by Nakagawa)

TRIZ/USIT Case Study: Japan TRIZ Symposium 2008 Presentation
USIT Approach for Compact Umbrella
MPUF （Microsoft Project Users Forum） USIT／TRIZ Study Group: Kouichi Nakamura (SONY Corp.), Etsuo Yamada (MPUF USIT/TRIZ WG), Minoru Takimoto (Fuji Xerox Corp.), Hirofumi Hasaba (MPUF Secretariat), Noritaka Nakayama (Konica Minolta Technology Center, Inc.), Hirotake Makino (Yokogawa Electric Corp.), and Yuji Mihara (Creative Technology Institute Co., Ltd.)
The Fourth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, Held by Japan TRIZ Society on Sept. 10-12, 2008 at Laforet Biwako, Moriyama, Shiga, Japan
Introduction by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.), Oct. 26, 2008
[Posted on May 7, 2009]

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Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, May 4, 2009)

This paper was presented at the Fourth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2008 , which was held last September by 'Japan TRIZ Society, NPO'. The presentation was given in an Poster session on the second day morning. MPUF is a network-based loose oganization of over 10,000 voluntary users who are interested in Project Management methods. It has nearly 20 study groups; USIT/TRIZ Study Group is one of them and was started by Toru Nakagawa and Yuji Mihara in Apr. 2007 (See the page in Japanese:). The present work of a USIT Case Study was achieved in its subgroup, having 7 members coming from different industries. The presentation is rich in the trials of using USIT together with other methods and in the generation of ideas.

Japan TRIZ Society is going to post the presentation files of all the Contributed Presentations in the 'Members-Only' area of its Official Web site (http://www.triz-japan.org/ ) in PDF in May-June, 2009. The present site, "TRIZ Home Page in Japan", on the other hand, is going to post several selected Contributed Presentations publicly, under the desire & permisson by the Authors and under the understanding by the Japan TRIZ Society. Presentation slides of them will be posted in PDF, with the policy of updating prohibited, copying and printing permitted.

The presentation slides are posted here in English in PDF . I also post my introduction to this wonderful presentation, in the form of an excerpt of my "Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symposium 2008" posted on Oct. 26, 2008. The introduction is now translated into Japanese and posted in my Japanese page of this site, together with the Author's presentation slides in PDF .

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Nakagawa's Introduction

Slides in PDF

Slides in Japanese

Japan TRIZ Symp. 2008

Nakagawa's Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symp. 2008

Japanese page

Presentation Slides in PDF

Presentation Slides in English in PDF (16 slides, 1.6 MB)
Presentation Slides in Japanese in PDF (16 slides, 1.6 MB)

Introduction to the Presentation by Kouichi Nakamura et al.

Excerpt from:
Personal Report of The Fourth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2008
by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University), Oct. 26, 2008
Posted on Oct. 26, 2008 in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

MPUF （Microsoft Project Users Forum） USIT／TRIZ Study Group: Kouichi Nakamura (SONY Corporation), Etsuo Yamada (MPUF USIT/TRIZ WG), Minoru Takimoto (Fuji Xerox Corporation), Hirofumi Hasaba (MPUF Secretariat), Noritaka Nakayama (Konica Minolta Technology Center, Inc.), Hirotake Makino (Yokogawa Electric Corporation), and Yuji Mihara (Creative Technology Institute Co., Ltd.) [P-A6 #46] gave another interesting Poster presentation with the title of "USIT Approach for Compact Umbrella".

MPUF is a network-based loose organization of voluntary people of common interest on Project management and various related methods. MPUF was originally organized by Hirofumi Hasaba and Keiko Ichinoki as the users group of the software Microsoft Project. It has a well organized active Web site partly public and partly limited to the members of free registration. MPUF currently has over 10,000 registered members and operates nearly 20 voluntary study groups on the topics of Project management, QFD, TOC, Taguchi Method, etc. USIT/TRIZ Study Group was started in April 2007 by Toru Nakagawa and Yuji Mihara on the request from the MPUF office. The purpose is to learn TRIZ and (particularly) USIT, together in a voluntary group. It has about 150 registered network members; about 20 of them coming from different industries are active to attend nearly-monthly off-line meetings held in Tokyo on Friday evenings. The Study Group had 3 Working Groups which tried to make group practices of USIT on different themes. The 'Compact Umbrella' WG is particularly active and had their own off-line meetings about 20 times.

This presentation has rich contents, in its methods and in its solutions. The top author, Kouichi Nakamura, is a Six Sigma Blackbelt working actively in SONY and tried to master USIT from various angles. Thus the method applied here is composed of USIT in original Sickafus' way, USIT in Mihara's way (i.e., a modification of Nakagawa's way), and TOC, QFD, etc. as introduced by Nakamura and WG members.

The following slide shows the definition of the problem. When we fold a compact umbrella after using it, we need to handle the ribs and cloths with a lot of manual works and get wet in the hand. We would like to have some new method for folding the umbrella easily or some new product in place to the ordinary compact umbrella. As a part of USIT process of problem definition, the root causes are discussed and presented here in the form of TOC's Current Reality Tree.

In the analysis stage, after the Functional Analysis, the Attribute Analysis is shown here. USIT suggests to list up the object's attributes relevant to the current undesired effects, and to distinguish them either increasing or decreasing relationship. In the slide, such attributes are examined more closely in the form of (simplified) QFD chart.

'Uniqueness' is the term by Sickafus for the space and time characteristics analysis. The folding process is examined here with illustrations and graphs.

Then the WG worked out a large number of ideas. The slide below gives a summary of solution procedures. The three main USIT Operators are shown here, after grouping their sub-operators (as suggested by Tateki Oka). Several principal ideas, which will be shown below, are linked to the USIT Operators which (can) generate the ideas.

The Solution concepts finally obtained are shown in the following two slides. The WG is active to get ideas by using hints from various products. And the WG actually made prototypes of their ideas and demonstrated them in the Symposium Poster presentation; they were amusing and amazing.

The following slide shows the conclusion of the presentation.

*** This is an intensive and nice case study of USIT. It has generated a lot of interesting solutions, and also various ways of introducing useful adjacent methods into USIT. When we want to learn a methodology seriously, we usually try to make the method more clearly structured (e.g., using templates and checklists, etc.) and more closely/elaborately analyzable (e.g., using detailed tables). This case study is not an exception. However, we should always try to make the methods as simple and as effective as possible. (See Ed Sickafus' Comments on Nakagawa's paper.) During this work I suggested to the WG to work more on the cloths and to find some practical ideas for improving the current compact umbrella. I think we need some more trials in this direction. The full set of presentation slides will be posted in this Web site in near future. [(May 4, 2009) The slides are now posted here.]