Japan TRIZ Symposium 2010 Paper


TRIZ at SMD:
Unique Situation, Unique Goals, Unique Approaches
SeHo Cheong, Len Kaplan, Valeriy Prushinskiy
(Samsung Mobile Display, South Korea)
The Sixth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, Held by Japan TRIZ Society on Sept. 9-11, 2010 at Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan
Introduction by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.), Mar. 21, 2011
[Posted on Sept 19, 2011] 

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Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Sept. 18, 2011)

This paper was presented by SeHo Cheong a year ago in an Oral session at the Sixth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2010.  Presentation slides have been posted in PDF both in English and in Japanese translation (by Atsushi Inoue) in the Members-only page of Japan TRIZ Society's Official Site since last March.  For wider circulation, they are now posted here publicly under the permissions of the Authors. 

Last March I posted an introduction to this paper as a part of my Personal Report of the Symposium.  The excerpt is posted here again in English. 

An impressive report of the company-wide and advanced approaches for promoting TRIZ. They set their goals to keep the position of technology leader in the global business of mobile displays. Thus their main approaches are “How to make things that nobody in industry has made yet?” For this purpose they have the top-down movement from CEO, TRIZ training to all the employees, bringing up 20 members of 'Creative Elite' a year, etc.

Top of this page Abstract Slides in PDF Slides in Japanese, PDF Nakagawa's Introduction Nakagawa's Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symp. 2010 Japan TRIZ Symp. 2010 Japanese page

[1] Abstract

TRIZ at SMD:
Unique Situation, Unique Goals, Unique Approaches

SeHo Cheong, Len Kaplan, Valeriy Prushinskiy
(Samsung Mobile Display, South Korea)

Abstract

TRIZ team at Samsung Mobile Display works in unique situation. Usually, TRIZ teams solve problems, “How to improve on industry achievements?” SMD, however, possesses the position of technological leader. As a result, TRIZ problems here are “How to make things that nobody in industry has made yet?” or “How to produce absolutely new product or implement absolutely new process?” The unique goals of SMD TRIZ team are based on ultimate objective, “Remain the Global #1 in displays.” SMD TRIZ team applies TRIZ to the challenges the team faces. As a result, the team develops and implements the unique approaches to its day-by-day work.

Extended Abstract

Unique Situation

SMD was created in January 2009 at the leading edge of display development. SMD is the world technological leader in AMOLED and small LCD displays. The ultimate goal is to remain the Global #1 in delivering innovative displays to the wide variety of customers.

Being the world leader is not easy. To maintain the leading position, SMD should in daily activities pursue the following objectives:

1. Be ahead of other companies
2. Find out ahead of time what customers will want, and relentlessly deliver new products to the market
3. Produce innovative products in profitable way

Such unique reality creates the following challenges to all innovative works at SMD:

1. Develop and implement the strategy of being permanently ahead of competitors
2. Efficiently forecast the consumers’ expectations and reveal new opportunities.
3. Produce the innovative products with well-established manufacturing processes.
4. Overcome the problems typical to early stages of evolution of new principle of operation.
5. Avoid or prevent possible manufacturing bottlenecks.

What makes these challenges unique in SMD case?

First, the scale: challenges affect every activity of SMD.
Second, their interconnection: all challenges affect every SMD product and project.
Third, their permanency: challenges are here as long as SMD stays the world leader.

Unique Goals

The unique goals of SMD TRIZ team are based on ultimate objective, “Remain the Global #1 in displays.” This understanding suggests the following primary goals for SMD TRIZ team:

1. Increase awareness of SMD employees on TRIZ.
2. Train employees in use of TRIZ.
3. Provide TRIZ support to all NPD activities.
4. Run internal projects, reveal new opportunities.
5. Develop and use specialized TRIZ-based tools.

Unique Approaches

To address the unique situation, TRIZ team sets unique goals. To achieve these unique goals, unique approaches should be used. For example, application of TRIZ to the challenges created by unique situation of SMD TRIZ team.

The basic algorithm is simple. It repeats the basic logic of ARIZ:

1. Describe the Objective: what do you need to achieve?
2. Formulate the Ideal Final Result: what would be the ideal solution to your situation?
3. Find out the Contradiction: what prevents you from achieving the ideal result?
4. Resolve the Contradiction: what solution meets both contradicting requirements?
5. Apply the Resources: what available resources can realize this solution?
6. Reveal the Subsequent Problems: why this solution doesn’t work?
7. Solve the Subsequent Problems and formulate the Solution: what solution is worth implementing?

If we combine the ideas generated during this analysis into the solution, it would look like this:

NPD project team is trained in use of TRIZ before the project starts. During this training, NPD project team learns when TRIZ should be used:

• Define the project objectives and criteria
• Select the initial concept
• Project faces the substantial obstacle
• Something unexpected happens
• Prepare solution to implementation

When NPD project team during the project faces these problem situations, it tries to solve them on their own. They document results of this work and sent them to the TRIZ coaches who suggest how to improve TRIZ work. If problem situation is tough, team invites the TRIZ experts.

TRIZ expert facilitates the NPD project team members. They find the solution. There is no need to convince the team that this solution is working.

As a result, TRIZ experts are used with maximum efficiency, and can participate in many NPD projects.

Current Accomplishments

As a result, the team develops and implements the unique approaches to its day-by-day work.

• TRIZ training of SMD engineers is already organized
• Regular interactions between NPD project teams and TRIZ experts are already established
• NPD project teams already try to use TRIZ methods to resolve some problems they face in the project
• NPD teams are already accustomed to thorough documenting their TRIZ work.

The work only started. More efforts are necessary to implement this solution.


[2]  Presentation Slides in PDF

Presentation Slides in English in PDF (24 slides, 3.2 MB)

Presentation Slides in Japanese in PDF (24 slides, 2.7 MB) (Japanese translation by Atsushi Inoue (TOSHIBA))


[3]  Introduction to the Presentation (by Nakagawa)

Excerpt from: 
Personal Report of The Sixth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2010, Part E
by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University),
Posted on Mar. 21, 2011 in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

 

SeHo Cheong, Len Kaplan, and Valeriy Prushinskiy (Samsung Mobile Display, South Korea) [E01, O-13] gave an Oral presentation with the title of "TRIZ at SMD: Unique Situation, Unique Goals, Unique Approaches". 

TRIZ team at Samsung Mobile Display works in unique situation. Usually, TRIZ teams solve problems, “How to improve on industry achievements?” SMD, however, possesses the position of technological leader. As a result, TRIZ problems here are “How to make things that nobody in industry has made yet?” or “How to produce absolutely new product or implement absolutely new process?” The unique goals of SMD TRIZ team are based on ultimate objective, “Remain the Global #1 in displays.” SMD TRIZ team applies TRIZ to the challenges the team faces. As a result, the team develops and implements the unique approaches to its day-by-day work.

[*** As you read, the Authors' Abstract is really challenging.  Thus, I would like to trace what they say in the presentation and what are their intended goals and their approaches.]  Skipping the part of their mentioning the situations, the slide (below-left) writes about their intended goals.   It is clear that they want to "Remain the Global #1 in displays".  Hence they want to apply TRIZ mainly to the projects for creating new products/services, instead of those for defect improvements.  The slide (below-left) lists typical problems for TRZ application; the Authors emphasize the types of their priority in blue fonts. 

   

Now the Authors talk about their approaches.   First is to persuade CEO and bring CEO's messages to the project (slide (below-left)).  The way of selecting TRIZ projects (and TRIZ task forces) is shown in the slide (below-right).  Plan (or 'Draw') is made by CEO, executives, and TRIZ Team leader, and then the Task Force (for collaboration of multiple divisions) is organized by the leadership of the TRIZ Team, and the project is approved by CEO to start. 

   

The second approach (slide (below-left)) seems to be related to the way of in-depth thinking.  The slide (below-right) is very interesting.  It lists up the basic attitudes/ways of thinking, written in general terms but deeply supported by TRIZ. 

  

Their third approach is the training and education of TRIZ (slide (below-left)).  They give all technical employee the basic training of 3-4 days.  The TRIZ education curriculum is shown in the slide (belo-right).  At the fundamental level, they (or all the Samsung group companies) use the TRIZ e-learning course developed in Samsung.  Then at Step 2, the basic course is given to all the engineers (and CEO and directors) for 3-4 days on Classical TRIZ.  Further they operate the (MATRIZ approval) Level 2 course to train 'Creative Elite', and also Level 3 course for training TRIZ specialists.  As shown in the slide (below-left), they actively use small groups (of 5-6 members) for solving problems in daily projects.

 

Their fourth Approach seems to be related to people.  The slide (below-left) writes that they selected people for 'Creative Elite'.  The five aspects of requirements for the Creative Elite are interesting.  Creative Elites are expected to have both technical ability and personality to help other people succeed, and to work as members of internal TRIZ promotion & educational team.  In year 2009, they have brought up 20 engineers as such 'Creative Elites'. 

 

The way of organizing the cooperation between the TRIZ team and other divisions is also important.  The slide (right) show the case of forming task forces for company's big projects.  R&D project team, Manufacture project team, and Supplier companies join at the level of clients, while the TRIZ team as well as CAE group, Scientific experts, and Technology group join at the level of partners.   The interaction among all these people/groups seems to be important for the success of big projects.   

Their fifth approach is the formation of TRIZ Supporting System in a wide sense (slide (below-left)).  Its mission is to serve for effective operation of the TRIZ project and communication among users.  TRIZ projects are supported by the IT system in the aspects as shown in the figure.  The TRIZ Supporting System also serve as the 'Data room' where education materials, seminar materials, and case studies of projects, etc. are stored.  Features for 'TRIZ Boom-up' are also operated.  TRIZ Festival in SMD (Samson Mobile Display) is held every year (slide (below-right)).  Samsung group companies join together in Samsung TRIZ Association (STA) and operate STA TRIZ Webzine, for communication and sharing the results together.

  

In the following two slides (below) the Authors summarize their TRIZ results in 2009 and the TRIZ status.  They carried out 48 TRIZ Projects in a year.  Their projects, TRIZ promoters ('Creative Elite'), tools, and support system, etc. are expanding, they say. 

 

[*** It is quite impressive that in SMD (and probably also in other Samsung group companies) TRIZ has been promoted strategically and utilized well in the company's big projects.  We can learn a lot from this excellent presentation.]

 

[Note: We have now posted the original presentation slides in the present Web site in English and in Japanese . (Sept. 19, 2011)]

 

Top of this page Abstract Slides in PDF Slides in Japanese, PDF Nakagawa's Introduction Nakagawa's Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symp. 2010 Japan TRIZ Symp. 2010 Japanese page

 

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Last updated on Sept. 19, 2011.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp