Practical Use of Scientific Creative Techniques for the Development of Telecommunication Devices (Takahiro Shoji et al., Japan TRIZ Symp. 2009) (Introduction, by Nakagawa)

TRIZ Paper: Japan TRIZ Symposium 2009 Paper
Practical Use of Scientific Creative Techniques for the Development of Telecommunication Devices
Takahiro Shoji and Yosuke Koga (Panasonic Communications Co.)
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. 6, 2009; Japanese translation on May 22, 2010.
[Posted on May 30, 2010]

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Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, May 22, 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. Congratulations!

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). For the purpose of wider publicity of this presentation, I have just made the present page in English as well as in Japanese in the "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" and posted the PDF files of the presentation under the permission by the Authors. Nakagawa's introduction to this paper was written as a part of his "Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symposium 2009" (Part D). The introduction is extracted and posted here in English, and is posted in Japanese translation, too.

Panasonic Communications Company (PCC) introduced TRIZ since 2001 and has been actively used the integrated set of scientific techniques including QFD-TRIZ-Taguchi Method (as well as CAD/CAE) in a company-wide scale. In Japan, PCC is perhaps the company where TRIZ has been applied most actively and widely (See, for example, Koga (2007) ).

Nevertheless, engineers in development projects are apt not to use such TRIZ-based scientific techniques because of being too busy to apply them in their orthodox forms. Thus the Authors realized the needs of making the methods 'scalable' corresponding to the demands of the projects and easier to apply. This paper reports the new method the Authors developed in such a direction. At first sight, the method does not appear like a TRIZ any more. But TRIZ underlies and supports the new method firmly. TRIZ practitioners in industry have really digested TRIZ and reformed it into a new form for real applications.

As I wrote in my Personal Report of the Symposium, I could not attend at the presentation of this paper (due to the double track sessions) and I realized the significance of this paper slowly while I was working to write the introduction. Since TRIZ has been digested and reformed here, you might be puzzled if you would try to understand this method in the conventional framework of TRIZ. You are advised to read this paper with an open mind.

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Abstract

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Nakagawa's Introduction

Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symp. 2009

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[1] Abstract

Practical Use of Scientific Creative Techniques for the Development of Telecommunication Devices

Takahiro Shoji and Yosuke Koga (Panasonic Communications Co.)

Abstract

Panasonic Communications Co. (PCC) has already deployed the scientific methods including QFD, TRIZ, and Quality Engineering (or Taguchi Method) and utilized them in the processes of product planning, development, and manufacturing.As we reported several times already in the preceding Japan TRIZ Symposia, the effectiveness of such methods has been proved well in real projects in our company .However, such a set of scientific techniques are regularly utilized only in some divisions in our company; thus they are not yet in the stage of company-wide utilization.One of the causes, as we understand, is the fact that most of such scientific approaches require rather high skills in the manipulation and take much time in the processing.

For the purpose of overcoming this difficulty, we have developed a creativity method and a process of technical problem solving, which can be applied easily even by the beginners of scientific methods or creativity methods and even in the busy situations when the engineers need to do the development work and the problem solving in parallel.We will report such a process and method and also a case study of applying them to the development of telecommunication devices.

[2] Presentation Slides in PDF

Presentation Slides in English in PDF (24 slides, 1.1 MB)

Presentation Slides in Japanese in PDF (24 slides, 1.3 MB)

[3] Introduction to the Presentation (by Nakagawa)

Excerpt from:
Personal Report of The Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2009, Part D. Case Studies in Industries
by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University), Nov. 28, 2009
Posted on Dec. 6, 2009 in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

Takahiro Shoji and Yosuke Koga (Panasonic Communications Co.) [J23 O-3] gave an nice Oral presentation with the title of "Practical Use of Scientific Creative Techniques for the Development of Telecommunication Devices". This presentation obtained the Award as the result of the voting by Japanese participants. I will quote the Authors' Abstract, first.

Panasonic Communications Co. (PCC) has already deployed the scientific methods including QFD, TRIZ, and Quality Engineering (or Taguchi Method) and utilized them in the processes of product planning, development, and manufacturing.As we reported several times already in the preceding Japan TRIZ Symposia, the effectiveness of such methods has been proved well in real projects in our company .However, such a set of scientific techniques are regularly utilized only in some divisions in our company; thus they are not yet in the stage of company-wide utilization.One of the causes, as we understand, is the fact that most of such scientific approaches require rather high skills in the manipulation and take much time in the processing.

For the purpose of overcoming this difficulty, we have developed a creativity method and a process of technical problem solving, which can be applied easily even by the beginners of scientific methods or creativity methods and even in the busy situations when the engineers need to do the development work and the problem solving in parallel.We will report such a process and method and also a case study of applying them to the development of telecommunication devices.

This company, Panasonic Communications Co. (PCC), has the history of actively introducing TRIZ together with QFD and Taguchi Method, as they reported in the Japan TRIZ Symposia for these 5 years (see: Koga (2007) ). Their first 3 slides are shown below. They have already introduced and deployed the full set of QFD/TRIZ/TM and succeeded in demonstrating their effectiveness in some of their real products, and they now have met the difficulty of applying them to many ordinary projects. Easier and more effective/productive application practice is required for regular basis. Thus the Authors' strategies are: to make the method 'scalable' depending on the size/requirements of the project, to make the process and ideas visual, and to make the methods simpler. [*** Unfortunately, the English translation in the slides seems not so high quality as their work itself. I will try to convey their work to you, even though I missed to attend at this presentation due to the double track session. ]

The slide (right) shows the process of applying their TRIZ/Scientific method to the project in a scalable manner. Before starting the TRIZ process, the TRIZ coordinator meet with the manager of the engineering team and discuss/review/define the possible inputs, available resources, and desirable outputs. Thus they design (or adjust) the process of TRIZ application with respect to steps, methods, and references. And they prepare some materials and documents, which describe the theme, schedule, and output image of the TRIZ application project. After these preparation, the TRIZ project meetings are held by the TRIZ coordinator(s) and the engineering team.

The slide (right) shows the full process of applying the new TRIZ/Scientific method . The whole process starts with the setting up the theme, and finally ends with the filing of patents of created solutions. The process is composed of 3 main phases:
(I) The first phase is to generate many fundamental (or preliminary, existing) ideas of functions and to make a tree-style map of the ideas with respect to their purposes of functions in order to understand the overall view of the problem and desirable solution fields.
(II) The second phase is to select the areas on which the solution efforts should be focused and then to force the members to create new/inventive ideas in the selected areas.
(III) Finally in the third phase, the ideas generated so far are evaluated (with some understanding/reviewing of the levels of the patents in the relevant fields) and then the possible highly-evaluated ideas are to be enhanced by combining subsidiary ideas, thinking deeply, and looking from different angles (such as your competitors' views). Thus the ideas are elevated to the solutions which are possible to be implemented and to be filed as patents.

All these processes are designed to be simple, straightforward, visualized, and scalable. The process has been applied to some real projects so far in PCC.

(I) The following two slides (below) demonstrate the purposes and the methods of the first phase with examples in a real project. In this phase, the main objective is not to generate new ideas but to list up all the existing and desirable functions of the product to be developed. All the members are encouraged to think of such functions/features and write them on post-it sheets one after another. Then a different member should write the objective/purpose of the function, and other members are encouraged to think of further desirable functions. Then all the objectives and functions are rearranged in a hierarchical tree-type structure to form a map of functions.

(II) The second phase is demonstrated in the following four slides (below). The first task in this phase is to select the areas/themes where the project should develop new ideas. For generating new ideas in each theme, the project applies 'Managed Brainstorming' as shown in the slide (upper-right). The members are pushed to generate ideas in 30 seconds by turn. Another method is the use of STC operator together with the scenario thinking (slide bottom-left). All the ideas generated are listed in the form of Function/Techniques Map (slide bottom-right).

(III) Then in the third phase, all the ideas are evaluated quickly by using an evaluation sheet having the criteria (including novelty, effectiveness, needs, seeds, etc.) as shown in the slide (below, upper-left). The highly-evaluated ideas are further enhanced in this phase by combining other subsidiary ideas (upper-right), investigating closely how it works in a usage scenario (bottom-left), and considering about it from competitors' view points (bottom-right), etc. This phase intends to make strong patents from the generated ideas.

The present work put much stress on making the whole process clear to the members and their managers and sharing the motivation for innovation. The slide (right) visualizes the meaning/intention of the present three-phase process. The graph intends to show the positions of ideas with respect to the novelty (in abscissa) and the degree of realization (in ordinate). Phase I is to list up existing ideas and desirable features, which are not yet solution ideas with any inventiveness. Phase II is the process of Managed Brainstorming for generating new and inventive ideas which may not be implementable in this stage. In Phase III, such ideas are filtered through a simple process of evaluation and good ideas are further enhanced for making them implementable and patentable.

The slide (right) shows the Authors' Conclusions. They say that simplification, visualization, and scalability are the three most important approaches in their present method which are accepted much better in their real projects. Simplification is clear in the point that the present method is explained with very few TRIZ terms so that ordinary engineers can understand and carry out the whole process easily. Visualization is apparent in their ways of using post-it notes, building Function/Techniques Map, evaluating ideas with Evaluation Sheet, and presenting the meanings of the process. Scalability of this process can be seen in the management meeting at the start and in the adjustability in generating and screening the ideas (in all the phases) in the number and depth of treatment. The Authors say the present method has been accepted well by engineers.

*** When I read the slides (without attending at the Oral presentation), I was not clear at first about the significance of the whole process and how TRIZ (and QFD/TM) methods are introduced in it. I have realized them little by little while I wrote this review by reading their slides in Japanese and in English. I would be happy if this review could convey the Authors' thoughts properly.
Phase I reflects QFD and TRIZ, especially in the hierarchical deployment of purposes and functions.
Phase II is the stage of enforced idea generation, and the Authors use Managed Brainstorming (with TRIZ STC Operators and Scenario thinking). In this phase various TRIZ knowledge (especially Inventive Principles and Trends of Evolution of Technical Systems) may be useful as the background; thus engineers (or TRIZ beginners) having learned these TRIZ knowledge bases can do this process much better, I suppose.
In Phase III various TRIZ methods/knowledge may be introduced for enhancing the ideas.

*** In short, the present process seems to be designed to use ordinary ways familiar to the engineers with backing up by TRIZ and other methods implicitly. This seems to be a valuable approach in applying TRIZ to real projects relatively large and yet short in time. We wish to hear about the Authors' further extension and experiences of this approach in the near future.