Triz

TRIZ in the process industry
[ Previous ] [ Home Page ] [ Up 1 Level ] [ Next ]
TRIZ in the process industry
Gert Poppe and Bart Gras
Innovation Quotient
P.O.Box 170
5550 AD Valkenswaard
The Netherlands
www.triz.nl
This article was first published in shorter form in the proceedings of the European TRIZ Association Conference, November, 2001.
Abstract
In recent years TRIZ has gainedincreasing interest in the manufacturing industry in the Western world. This interest is driven by different factors including:
1. Companies introduce product innovations faster and on the other hand have more difficulty to attract skilled R&D professionals.
2. The availability of state-of-the-art software supporting the TRIZ methodology.
Also in process industry, TRIZ interestincreases. There are several points of attention, differing from product development, in applying TRIZ in the process industry:
1. the ‘product’ is intimately linked to the process by which it is made . Any change in the product is mostly achieved by an adaptation of the process.
2. the TRIZ knowledge base has initially been built on information contained in patents. But ‘kitchen secrets’ of how toproduce a metal alloy or an engineering plastic are usually not patented.
3. Causes of a problem in a process cannot easily be pinpointed. The problems can be tracked down to causes in areas like raw materials, chemistry, control loops etc.
In the article it will be described how TRIZ can be a success when applied to typical problems of the process industry.
 
TRIZ in the process industry?
There is a very important reason to increase the insight into the possibilities of the TRIZ methodology for the improvement of production processes. As one can see in the figure 1, in the beginning of the lifetime of a product, one sees a high number of product innovations. As the product becomes more mature, the number of product innovations is reduced drastically, at least until a trend shiftoccurs. During this stage of the product (a major part of the life-cycle), improvements will mainly be achieved through changes and innovations in the production process. It would therefore be very unwise to limit the application of TRIZ to product improvements. This means that we will have to identify the reasons which, at first sight, hinder the application of TRIZ in the process industry.After this identification, we will have to find ways to overcome these impediments.

We will, in this paragraph, address the most important factors that seem to limit the use of TRIZ there :
1. TRIZ is based on an analysis of patents
2. TRIZ examples are often “product” examples
3. The real cause of a problem is often hidden somewhere in the process
4. There exists an intimate linkbetween the product and the process by which it is manufactured.
These factors off course do not hinder the application of TRIZ in the process industry, but they can serve as immediate arguments for those who have their doubts about TRIZ. It is important that TRIZ-professionals understand the origin of these arguments. They also have to be prepared to counter them : these arguments are not false(the fact that they are very much true make them good arguments), but they are not, for reasons explained further in this article, blocking the application of TRIZ in the process industry.
1. TRIZ is based on an analysis of patents
TRIZ is based on an in-depth analysis of patents. These patents have led to the development of the different TRIZ-techniques e.g the 40 principles, the trends ofevolution and the construction of the TRIZ knowledge base1. Typical about improvements in manufacturing processes is that these are often not patented. As long as it is not possible to see from properties (specifications, form, structure, …) of the product, what process change has brought about the improvement, companies tend not to make public (by patenting or otherwise) the ins-and-outs of this...