About the conference

Abstract:

The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) is known for its strengths in articulating and resolving system contradictions (the root causes of unfortunate tradeoffs). Knowing that most difficult problems seem to be unsolvable only because of hidden unjustified assumptions underlying the initial problem statement, TRIZnics invest much time and effort into rigorous problem analysis and articulation. As a consequence, one vector of the development of TRIZ consists in the development of efficient problem-analytical tools. For example, in the late 1990s, Root Conflict Analysis (RCA+) was developed by merging ideas from TRIZ and from the Theory of Constraints. Our paper presents an improvement on this method by further constraining the way of articulating cause-effect-cause chains with the help of a methodology inspired by an old Chinese game known as Domino. Since the cause-effect-dominoes require more rigorous formulations of the actual cause-effect-chains, both (i) the formulation of the logical nature of the problem and (ii) the underlying functional chains will become more explicit (compared to conventional RCA+ or RCA). This will be shown by discussing both (i) the successful application of this approach in an industry project and (ii) an example of conventional RCA+ from the literature.

Explorations on Computer-aided Innovation Education