Concepts And Laws Of Evolution

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

CIS515 2012 BP

Dr. YIng Liu

Concepts and 'laws of evolution'

TRIZ (Theoria Resheneyva Isobretatelskehuh Zadach) is the Russian acronym for the "The theory of inventive problem solving" and this theory was developed in USSR by a bright patent examiner of Russian navy, Genrich Altshulle in 1950. TRIZ was originated based on extensive research and study of huge numbers (initially thousands and now millions) of the world’s most inventive patents. After going through expensive research and analysis of inventions, Altshuller concluded that evolution formation of the technology follow a specific set of repetitive patterns. These repetitive patterns can be applied or used for problem resolution and technological advancement. Genrich Altshuller recognized that the development of technological systems always predictable and follow a specific patterns that cut aboard all areas of technology and the pace of technology evolution can be expedited. Genrich Altshuller also acknowledged that problem solving fundamentals are also predictable and repetitive. Initially TRIZ was used in the Soviet defense industries but later the benefits of this concept became available in USA and used by lot of big corporations. Book

Technology innovation is very old and every time some new technology is invented it is said that that’s the last innovation in technology, but it’s a wrong perception and innovation is an ongoing process to invent the new product to help our life, and it will never stop. We have seen that most of the great innovation happened in past did not have any systematic or organized approach and took lot of time for creator i.e. wheel, automobile, light bulb, airplane and the computer etc. TRIZ tells us that evolution of technology o system does not follow random path and it’s governed by certain laws and we are going to discuss these laws in following section of essay. Book

Let’s first see how the new concepts or products are developed. Necessity is the mother of invention is an English proverb which means difficult situation or need always help create new innovations. We can also see and correlate this saying in TRIZ prospective also as in when problems exist during a product development process, already developed system new functionality is required or introduced. Every new product development starts with recognition of need. Once we have need in place we will transform into clearly defined problem or set of problems.

I am working in SAP BI (Business intelligence) and every day user comes up with their need of automating business process and reducing the overall time for analysis and running the report. Let me take example in terms of TRIZ, where we had to develop customer portal for Toyota dealers and customers and Toyota wanted an automate process for dealers and customers to see a dashboard for their invoice, vehicle data and maintenance cycle. Constraints were that we had to develop a system where dealers and customer should be able to see a report in less than 5 second and we had budget constraints, existing technology use and security concern not to see each other data. So we had a need for customer/dealer reporting portal and constraints were dynamic security, budget, and make use of existing technology. Since security was very dynamic as whenever any new dealer or customer is added or deleted front end customer should be able to handle it without going in back end process and doing heavy IT coding for security adjustment We have developed a table in SAP R/3 which can be interacted with web and data can be maintained by Toyota customer care based on dealer’s and customer’s requests. This table will have user id and location data associated for them and it will be used in SAP BI solution to restrict the overall reporting data so that user will see data associate with them. Based on this table maintenance we were able to save huge development and maintenance in backend design in order to make changes for new customer, changes into existing and deletion. If we had to use standard functionality of SAP BI security it would require custom security profile to be changed or created for every user i.e. if we have 5000 customer and 2000 dealer it would require 7000 profile to be created in back end and a dedicated team to maintain the same.

So I can correlate TRIZ product development process here as whenever there is a need we identify the clearly defined problem for the same with constraints. Next process is to generate various conceptual solutions to the problems. Generate concepts are evaluated against various criteria and the most promising ones are selected for designing a prototype. Finally the detailed design phase is fully developed and dimension of all components are determined.

Need (Toyota Customer/Dealer Portal)

Problem Definition Performance reporting with Constraints: - Dynamic Security, Budget, and Use of existing technology

Concept Development

A-Create 7000 user security profile in SAP BI

B-Create SAP R/3 table to be maintained be Customer service

Concept verification, evaluation and Prototype

B-Create SAP R/3 table to be maintained be Customer service is less development, no maintenance in long run and cost efficient.

Detailed Design and Development

B-Development of option B with detailed design of customer and dealer requirements

We can also compare the above model with Basic model of TRIZ as follows.

We have lot of powerful engineering tools and analytical methods available in the market which can help in efficient evaluation of new concepts? If look backward there was no efficient way to test and predict outcome of an idea without testing it. Thomas Edison performed 6000 experiments with a vast variety of material before inventing a satisfactory filament. In today’s world of advancement of technology and science we can avoid weak idea with the help of technology and concentrate on strong idea which can be developed as in innovation i.e. with the help of computer based system such as computer-aided design (CAD), Computer-sided manufacturing (CAM), finite element analysis (FFEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and others that help facilitate the product development. Book

TRIZ addresses both as a theory of technological evolution and a methodology for effective development of new technology system. It is not specific to any technology specific and can be applied to any technology. Main concept of TRIZ is that it use two major subsystems based on the law of technological system evolution which can be identified as a set of methods for developing conceptual design system and other is a set of tool for the identification and development for new advance technology innovations.

TRIZ foundation is based on 9 laws of evolution. Law of evolution work as if we are providing the input based on existing technology, and by following the law we can forecast and predict future configuration of technology. Altshuller’s opinion is that if these laws were known earlier and we follow them, the next generation tech advancement can be predicted and can be used for better and faster system. Please find the overview of the laws of evolution as follows:-

Law of increasing degree of ideality

Law of non-uniform evolution of subsystems

Law of transition to a higher-level system

Law of increasing flexibility

Law of transition to a micro-level

Law of completeness

Law of shortening of energy path flows

Law of increasing substance-field interactions

Law of harmonization states

Law of increasing degree of ideality: System follow a tendency to progress with advance and increased functionality and decreased cost along with problems. Let’s take an example of headphone, in past they were large, uncomfortable and expensive but with technology advancement they are now cheap and have more functionality.