TRIZ Paper: Japan TRIZ Symposium 2009 Paper


Case Study of Introducing and Applying TRIZ to Real Projects for Obtaining Results (= Profits)
(Part 2): Having Used QFD → TRIZ → TM, What are the Results?
Tomohiko Katagiri, Toshiaki Tsuchizawa, and Shuichi Hosaka (Koganei Co., Japan)
The Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, Held by Japan TRIZ Society on Sept. 10-12, 2009 at National Women's Education Center, Ranzan-machi, Hiki-gun, Saitama, Japan
Introduction by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.), Dec. 13, 2009; Japanese translation on May 7, 2010.
[Posted on May 9, 2010] 

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Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, May  7, 2010)

This paper was presented at the 5th TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2009 in an Oral session.  As the results of the voting by Japanese participants for "The best presentation for me", this presentation obtained the Oral Award again, in sequence to the same Award given to the same authors for the previous year Symposium.  Congratulations!

This paper reports that the Authors introduced not only TRIZ but also QFD (Quality Function Deployment) and TM (Taguchi Method) together and applied them to a real project of developing a new product of pneumatic air valve.  They have achieved an excellent new product in this 3-year project, they report.  They work for a manufacturing company specialized in the pneumatic equipments, where the pneumetic air valves driven by pulses are one of the main banches in their product line-ups.  The Authors have tried to capture real voices of customers by use of QFD and realized what sort of new products are required and what technical problems they really have to solve.  The technical problems were very challenging and demanding high performance; they solved them with TRIZ.  Some of the new solution concepts obtained with TRIZ are beyond their experiences and expertise.  Thus minimizing the risks in the new product development was important.  For this purpose, the Authors applied TM (Taguchi Method) in designing the test parameters and used CAD/CAE software for the simulation testing of various design choices.  The report describes details of the newly developed product, in its performance, inner structure, cases of applications, etc.

The three methods were all new at first to the Authors and to the company, they report.  They have had introduction/training seminars of the methods along the progress of the real development project and applied the methods to the real problems.  The training schedule is also reported.  It is unique that they requested only one Japanese consultant to instruct all the three methods and to coach the project throughout the course.  The achievement of this project may be regarded to show the level of the TRIZ community in Japan. There are a lot of users who want to learn "some real case studies of applying TRIZ"; this presentation is the one worthy to learn.

The slides of this presentation have been publicly posted in the Official Web site of Japan TRIZ Society since Dec. 1, 2009, (along with all other Award-winning presentations).  Sorry for the delay in posting this presentation in the "TRIZ Home Page in Japan".  I have just posted both English and Japanese pages.  The Authors presentation slides were translated into English by Toru Nakagawa for the Symposium.

I also wrote a detailed introduction to this presentation in Part E of "Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symposium 2009"; it was posted in English on Dec. 24, 2009.  The introduction has been translated into Japanese and is just posted in the Japanese page.


[1] Abstact

 

Case Study of Introducing and Applying TRIZ to Real Projects
for Obtaining Results (= Profits) (Part 2):
Having Used QFD → TRIZ → TM, What are the Results?

Tomohiko Katagiri, Toshiaki Tsuchizawa, and Shuichi Hosaka (Koganei Co., Japan)

Abstract

Our Company, Koganei Co., Ltd., is a manufacturer of aero-pneumatic equipments, developing, manufacturing, and selling such devices with about 800 employees.As we reported in Japan TRIZ Symposium last year, we have introduced not only TRIZ but also QFD and TM (Taguchi Method) since October 2006 for innovating our whole development process.Our target is to achieve good results (i.e., profits), of course, and we have applied these methods to the real development process of our new products.

The present paper is the second report of our introduction and application of QFD + TRIZ + TM.We will show you how we applied the methods in the actual development and what results we obtained.The following aspects will be reported with the real examples of the new products we developed.


[2]  Presentation Slides in PDF

Presentation Slides in English in PDF (28  slides, 1.7 MB) (English translation by Toru Nakagawa (OGU))

Presentation Slides in Japanese in PDF (28 slides, 2.0 MB)


[3]  Introduction to the Presentation (by Nakagawa)

Excerpt from: 
Personal Report of The Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2009, Part E
by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University), Dec. 13, 2009
Posted on Dec. 24, 2009 in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

Tomohiko Katagiri, Toshiaki Tsuchizawa, and Shuichi Hosaka (Koganei Co.), [J14 O-5] gave an excellent Oral presentation with the title of "Case Study of Introducing and Applying TRIZ to Real Projects for Obtaining Results (= Profits) (Part 2): Having Used QFD → TRIZ → TM, What are the Results? ".  This presentation has won the Award by the voting of Japanese participants this year again in sequence to their last-year presentation of Part 1 .  The Authors' Abstract is quoted here first:

Our Company, Koganei Co., Ltd., is a manufacturer of aero-pneumatic equipments, developing, manufacturing, and selling such devices with about 800 employees. As we reported in Japan TRIZ Symposium last year, we have introduced not only TRIZ but also QFD and TM (Taguchi Method) since October 2006 for innovating our whole development process. Our target is to achieve good results (i.e., profits), of course, and we have applied these methods to the real development process of our new products.

The present paper is the second report of our introduction and application of QFD + TRIZ + TM. We will show you how we applied the methods in the actual development and what results we obtained. The following aspects will be reported with the real examples of the new products we developed.

The Authors' company is a manufacture of aero-pneumatic equipments.  The slide (right) shows their Product Line-out.  There are 300,000 types of products, they say.
The slide (right) shows the intension of the present project.  The Goal is stated as 'Establishing "Absolute Strength" '. I.e.,to supply differentiated products continually which provide their customers with profits.  For achieving the goal, they realize 3 key points.  (1) To recognize the real essence of customers' requirements and to meet with customers' satisfaction. -- QFD was introduced for this purpose.  (1) To generate unique solutions. -- TRIZ.  (3) To minimize the risks for new unique solutions.  -- TM (Taguchi Method) and others (including 3D-CAD and CAE) were introduced. 

Thus they have chosen the strategy as shown in the following slide (below-left).  They introduced not only TRIZ but also QFD and TM as a set.  They have applied these methods to 3 real on-going projects.  They were unique in requesting the consultancy by only one instructor all the way through the 3 methods.  They also arranged the training schedule to match the progress of the projects, as shown in the slide (below-right). 

 

(1st Stage): The conceptual scheme of QFD is shown in the slide (right).  Members from sales, quality, manufacturing, and development divisions work together with the QFD scheme.  They gather and classify the customer needs, weigh the needs, and convert the information into the quality requirements.  Then (in the Quality-Function Deployment) they make quality planning, and convert the information into the quality parameters.  As shown in the slide (below-left), at the end of the Quality-Function Deployment, the project team understands the key issues (e.g. contradictions, cost-reduction requirements, optimal condition setting, etc.) they need to solve with TRIZ and further with TM.  The next slide (below-right) is a nice summary of the effects of introducing QFD before the TRIZ process.  They realize the importance and priorities of technical problems they have to solve by all means.   

 

(2nd Stage)  Key technical problems are solved by use of TRIZ.  In the next slide (below-left), one of the key technical problems actually solved in the present project is illustrated.  The key technical problem which got the consensus by the project members in the QFD stage is to develop a high-performance air valve and a new solenoid structure for deriving the valve.  In the slide (below-left), the solenoid structure and the valve are compared to the automobile engine and its power train. The target specification is to develop a new solenoid structure for an air valve, having large flow rate, high-speed on/off response, and yet low power consumption and long duration. 

[*** You may notice that the target requirements appear very aggressive, high and broad, at first.  You will soon see that the new product satisfying these requirements open a new horizon in various application areas.]  In the slide (below-right), the solution concepts obtained with TRIZ are listed up, together with the illustrations of the conventional and the new solenoid designs. 

 

(3rd stage)  Since several of their new ideas were out of the range of their experiences and expertise, there could be a lot of risks of failure in the design, manufacturing, performance, etc. (see slide (below-left)).  Thus the target task in this stage is to find the optimal and robust design of the new solenoid structure, as quickly as possible.  Thus the Authors adopted TM (Taguchi Method), as shown in the slide (below-right), for setting up various design parameters for testing.  The testing itself was done mostly with CAE (i.e., simulation with electromagnetic analysis software) instead of physical prototype experiments.  This approach has shortened the development period and has made the Authors confident in their design.

 

The following 2 slides (below) demonstrate the new product the Authors developed in the present project.  The product is a 'High-speed response 2-port valve'.  The valve, having the profile as shown (slide (below-left)), is used at the end (or in the middle) of a pipe of air flow and turns the flow on/off with high-speed response.  The table in the slide (below-left) shows the achievement of performance.  I.e., less than 1/2 in response time, over 3 times in flow rate, and less than 1/2 in electric power consumption in comparison with the company's conventional ones.  The slide (below-right) shows the inner structure of the valve and the solenoid structure for driving it.  The 3 methods (QFD, TRIZ, and TM) have contributed to the design choices as shown by the keywords in the slide (below-right). 

Usage examples of the new valve are illustrated in the following two slides (below).  The valve (below-left) is applied to the selecting process, where items on the conveyer are judged whether OK or NG and then only the NG items are blown out by the compressed air switched on/off by the present valve.  In response to the input pulse voltage, the new valve gives the sharp output pulse pressure (in blue curve) in comparison with the slower pulse pressure (in red curve) obtainable by the conventional valves.  This means shorter tact time and better selection accuracy.  In the next slide (below-right) the new valve is applied to the blowing process. The valve is operated in pulse drive, giving the blow of compressed air in pulses.  This gives better blowing effects, especially controllable in high speed, and reduced air consumption.

As mentioned above, the new valve has achieved much higher performance in response speed, flow rate, and power consumption than the conventional valves.  The slide (right) summarizes the current sales situations and future extension.  They started the sales to the open market in Jul. 2009, and received trade inquiries much larger in volume than expected.  Thus the company is now planning the extension of the product series and further development of new applications with effective use of the high-speed response of the valve and of the solenoid technology.

*** This result is a tremendous achievement in the area of pneumatic valves, which are the company's main products working over several decades, i.e. the technology was thought already quite mature.

The Authors discuss, in conclusion, about their Human resource development plan (slide right).  This diagram describes the tasks (in rectangles) to be tackled in the process of new-product development.  In rounded rectangles problems and issues to be addressed are mentioned.  The (arrow-like) pentagons show the methods applicable to (and introduced in) such processes.  The light-blue pentagons (especially QFD, TRIZ, and TM) were introduced in the present work.  The yellow ones and orange ones are (probably) the methods already used. 

*** This is an excellent work achieved by use of TRIZ (and QFD and TM) and an excellent presentation of case-study achieved with TRIZ in its scope, contents, and vividness.  It is amazing that the Authors were new in QFD, TRIZ, and TM when they started this project.  Congratulations to the Authors, the company, and the consultant, Mr. Hajime Kasai (IDEA), for their wonderful achievement.  We are very happy and proud of having this presentation in the Japan TRIZ Symposium 2009. 

 

Top of this page Abstract Slides in PDF Nakagawa's Introduction Slides in Japanese, PDF Nakagawa's Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symp. 2009 Japan TRIZ Symp. 2009 Katagiri e al. Paper TRIZ Symp. 2008 Japanese page

 

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Last updated on May  9, 2010.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp