Page 313 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) 281

Principle 40. Composite Structures
Change from Uniform to Composite (Multiple) Structures (Awareness and
Utilization Of Combinations of Different Skills and Capabilities)
• Create multidisciplinary project teams.
• Do training with a combination of lecture, simulations, on-line
learning, video, etc.
• Employ different personality types (e.g., Myers-Briggs) on a team.
• Hard person–soft person negotiating team.
• Mix of thinking skills in a project team.
• Positional players in a football team.
• Combined high risk–low risk investment strategy.

Example 9.5: Shorten the Product Development Duration for Complex
Products
Many manufacturers of complex products, for example, automobiles, suffer
from long product development time and cost. Quick product development
time is usually desired, but when a product is too complex, a quick product
development cycle is very difficult to achieve. Product complexity also makes
product development cost very high.

We can try to figure out some ways to resolve these difficulties by using
inventive business principles. First, we can model this problem as two pairs of
contradictions as follows:
1. The contradiction of system complexity versus R&D time
2. The contradiction of system complexity with R&D cost
For contradiction 1, by referring to the business contradiction matrix (see
Appendix B at the end of this chapter) we can find the following inventive
business principles:
5, 6, 25, 10, 2, 37
By closely examining these principles, we find the following items highly
relevant.
Principle 5: Merging
A. Bring closer together (or merge) identical or similar objects; assemble
identical or similar parts to perform parallel operations.
B. Make operations contiguous or parallel; bring them together in time.

Based on principle 5, the following approaches can be proposed for the product
development situation:
1. Develop similar components or subsystems in parallel.
2. Develop noninterfering/components or subsystems in parallel.