Innovation of the Week: Fantogramma, an Innovation Tool

For this week’s edition of innovation update, let me share with you an interesting innovation tool: Fantogramma, a technique for new fantasy ideas. I believe that innovation starts with fantasizing, and out of which new and fresh ideas come about.

Fantogramma is a powerful thinking tool for producing new science fiction and fantasy ideas in a systematic way. The idea of Fantogramma was originally proposed by the founder of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), Genrich Altshuller, in 1971 as one of the techniques designed for developing and improving personal creative skills and later became a part of the creative imagination development courses within the TRIZ community.1,5

To search for creative solutions to problems, it is important to:

• Relax constraints
• Withdraw from accumulated personal experience
• Get rid of mental associations
• Free the mind from known concepts (as much as possible)

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Filed under: Fantogramma, Innovation, Innovation Update, Triz

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Lean, Six Sigma Upcoming Educational Programs

ISSP is conducting Lean, Six Sigma, and Triz Trainings in the coming months. Check out the schedule below.

Filed under: ISSP, Lean, Six Sigma, Training, Triz

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The SixSig Roundup

It’s time again for some link-loving and see what other blogs are saying about Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma and other quality improvement processes.

Triz Sigma blog gives us some good reminders on how to select Six Sigma projects. “Choosing the right projects is crucial to the credibility of six sigma and its’ ability to live within the bounds of its’ own philosophies by being efficient and cost effective with the resources it employs.”

Daily Kaizen features a guest post from Dr. David McCulloch about Electronic Medical Records: the “drunk man’s keys” of the healthcare reform debate. “… if we simply apply cool technology to make our current irrational, unsafe, and overpriced healthcare system more ‘efficient’ then we will have achieved nothing. If applied to a rational system then electronic medical records could be the key to unlock the door to a warm, inviting medical home, a place where customers would feel safe and well cared for.”

From Evolving Excellence, I pick out the post on Lean is bigger than any of us. “The lean community talks a lot about leadership and culture, and a common trait I have found among the real lean successes is leadership that cares about other people and their communities. That is also true of just about everyone who supports or pushes lean.”

Learn Sigma has a good discussion going if QFD and Kansei Engineering can be integrated. This can “mean a way of identifying product development methods such as QFD etc., which are suitable for transferring  Kansei Engineering results into conventional product development.”

Over at Gemba Panta Rei, Jon Miller shares the lessons of the drop, the bucket, and the continuous improvement. The mindset should be that there’s no small thing that can’t affect the big, whole organization.

Filed under: Kaizen, Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Processes, Quality

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Dow Chemical Innovates with Six Sigma

I had written about Dow Chemical here a number of times already: when they started going Six Sigma, how they use Six Sigma to save on energy, and improve processes in their human resource.

The latest I’m sharing with you is how Dow Chemical Co. pursues innovation by not soley relying on inspiration, but on Six Sigma.

Dow Chemical is one of those companies that regard innovation as the lifeblood of their business. Surely, they cannot wait for for inspiration to strike to come up with high-quality products and exceptional services.

Over at RealInnovation.com, Sue Reynand shares how Dow pairs innovation with Six Sigma to keep their business ahead. As a matter of fact, Dow combines different methodologies to be constantly on the go.

They have a systematic blend of Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), which supplants inspiration with investigation. According to Tom Kling, a longtime Dow employee who served as Master Black Belt:

“it has proven to be a powerful combination. Six Sigma and DFSS bring the kind of up-front decision making that makes sure the problems you’re working on are important to the business. On the other hand, it helps you arrive at new solutions by importing technical solutions or scientific principles from other disciplines. So you solve design problems much more quickly.”

Read more…

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: DFSS, Deployment, Dow Chemical Co., Innovation, Six Sigma

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1 Page-Creative Problem Solving for Six Sigma

I stumbled upon this interesting information as I was surfing the web for good Six Sigma resource.

The paper starts with a discussion on the trends of Six Sigma methodology and how is it when viewed through TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) lens. Then it went on to discuss how the 1 Page-Creative Template, also called the Six Sigma Brainstorming Pool, will benefit Six Sigma deployments.

One interesting part in the paper is the A1 Page-Map of Innovation Patterns for the Six Sigma Methodology. Look at the figure below.

Click image for a larger view

The 1 Page-Map of Innovation Patterns, which reflects the concept of 360° innovation, is basically a graph in which customer delight is plotted against pain. All possible innovation patterns are covered in the figure. Innovation patterns, which relate to TRIZs Inventive Principles, are shown in appendix A. The TRIZ principles can be regarded as more detailed descriptions of innovation patterns that are found predominantly in technical systems. The 9 zones are given metaphorical but meaningful names in order to facilitate referencing; the description of the central (shaded) cell or Octopus Zone is omitted for clarity. The map is a 3×3 rectangular fractal in the sense that each zone can be regarded as a 3×3 map of innovation with similar descriptions for the 9 zones. In this article, the focus is on the 3×3 map as represented in the figure.

From the figure, the predominant direction in the evolution of Six Sigma is towards the Lion Zone, that is, the addition of tools and combination with other methodologies to make Six Sigma more powerful. In general, the range, application, and functionality of the Six Sigma methodology have increased but the pain (in terms of complexity as well as the time and cost of learning additional tools) has also increased. The latter effect is undesirable.

On the opposite end of the evolutionary spectrum, that is in the Minnow Zone in the figure, are variants of Six Sigma which are the results of removing parts and tools from classic Six Sigma. The focus of Six Sigma variants in the Minnow zone is to provide a simplified (less quantitative) view of Six Sigma and its principal tools. The aim is not to tactically apply Six Sigma but to gain an understanding of the philosophy and principles of Six Sigma in order to better position a business and develop strategies for competitive advantage. This approach is sometimes called “Strategic Six Sigma.”

Read more…

Source:
TRIZ Journal

Filed under: Deployment, Information Mapping, Six Sigma References

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Twelve Things I Learned About Six Sigma in 2006

“Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.”
-C.S. Lewis

1. Teamwork. I will need a cohesive team to do a successful Six Sigma project.
2. Management Support. Six Sigma projects should be aligned with the company’s overall strategy.
3. Data management. It’s easier to spot the problem, fix it, and avoid it, if I have all the data I need.
4. Statistics. Data is useless if I don’t know how to evaluate and make decisions based on the data.
5. Adaptability. Six Sigma can work well with other quality methodology and technology such as TRIZ, Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen and many others.
6. Lean Six Sigma. Adding Lean to Six Sigma is like turbo-charging my organization.
7. Six Sigma Tools (DMAIC, DFSS, CDOV, etc.). All these can improve the whole organization: human resource, supply chain, company’s bottomline.
8. Six Sigma Deployment. My organization must be ready to go Six Sigma, that is, it has enough resources in terms of finances and human resource, and everyone is committed to doing it one hundred percent!
9. Six Sigma Training. As in all other endeavor, I have to arm myself with knowledge and skills. Having highly trained people adds value to my company.
10. Software. Minitab and PowerSteering continue to help Six Sigma deployment by coming up with new, useful software.
11. Process Improvement. Six Sigma improves not only manufacturing processes, but also services, specifically healthcare services.
12. Companies that are into or continue to go into Six Sigma this year:
    Motorola
    Christmas Decorations and Gift Store
    Fenner
    3M Brazil
    Decatur Memorial Hospital
    AVC Corp.
    UIHC
    Tata Consultancy Services
    CII
    Mercury Marine
    Cummins
    Serigraph, Inc.
    GE
    Hagen & Company
    Red Robin Restaurants
    Sports Fans of America Association
    First Vehicle Services
    Textron
    Adtron Corp. and Sulja Brothers
    Maple Leaf Bakeries
    Ecco Indonesia
    VentureHaus Limited
    OMNEX and AIAG
    CIGNA Healthcare
    Micropump
    Batelco
    Microsoft
    Mercury
    First Sumiden Circuits, Inc.
    Toshiba
    AMI Semiconductor-Philippines
    Barco, Ernst & Young, SKF
    US Fuels
    Sun Chemical
    Delphi Corporation-Steering Division
    NBC Universal
    MagnaChip Conductors
    HSBC Malaysia
    Dow Chemical Company
    Scottish Power
    U.S. Forces Korea
    Perkins Engines
    Boeing
    Freudenberg-NOK

*Photo credit: MorgueFile.com

Filed under: Tips

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TRIZ on the Improve Stage of Six Sigma’s DMAIC

As a process of systematic study and analysis, TRIZ makes problem solving easier. One characteristic of the TRIZ approach is its ability to break down problems into more manageable and understandable pieces. This is actually what you need to do when you are faced with a challenge.

The discipline of TRIZ allows you to do this. Thus, if you are to fit it into your Six Sigma methodology, you find at which stage in the DMAIC cycle it will be. Will it be in the Define stage, or in the Control stage?

Ferret.com in one of its problem-solving articles suggests:

The use of TRIZ is a standard recommendation for the Improve stage in the DMAIC cycle and forms an essential part of the Design for Six Sigma process…

Continuous improvement – The constant switching in TRIZ reasoning between the large picture view and minute detail ensures that improvements are carried out efficiently. The quest for increasing ideality provides the motivation for sustaining such programs within the organisation.

Link: Problem solving: looking back to go forward

Filed under: Deployment

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Six Sigma and Triz: Working Together

Popular notion has it that success and innovation do not always go together. Why so? That is because innovation means change—to change the lifestyle you are leading at that particular moment. Often, some organizations do not foresee what’s beyond the change they are facing at the moment. They only see change as something that rocks the boat.

I remember Jim Clark, CEO of InnoGreat and speaker of the “Breakthrough Innovation” seminar I attended, you have to welcome change. Embrace innovation all the time, be at the fringe, otherwise your company will become conventional, and will eventually turn into yesterday’s news. There must always be something new and good about your company so that your customers get pleasantly surprised, at every turn, all the time.

With Six Sigma, you are assured of constant innovation already as its DMAIC methodology requires you to follow through with your projects. Somehow, continuous improvement through some mechanical (as in statistics and data mining) method is sometimes not enough. Creativity has an important role to play, too. This is where TRIZ comes in.

Mulbury Consulting commends:

By combining TRIZ and Six Sigma together you get the best of both worlds. Creativity and innovation are essential everywhere in life and TRIZ should not be just for the engineers and designers! On its own TRIZ can be very technical and product focused, however by using DMAIC rather than ARIZ (algorithm for inventive problem solving) to drive TRIZ the approach is simplified as a tool for everyone within the mainstream business.

Six Sigma brings cross functional project teams and strong focus to solving real business problems, and the benefits for the TRIZ programme are

• a ‘Clearly Invented Here’ syndrome
• strong management support and focus
• exceptional presentation support for ideas
• elimination or mitigation of prejudice and hostility
• self-promotion and of salesmanship from the team

Link: Six Sigma TRIZ

Filed under: Deployment, Training

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I-TRIZ: Ironing Out Bottlenecks in Six Sigma Projects

In every project execution, you can’t help encountering problems along the way. In Six Sigma or project management parlance, these problems are called bottlenecks.

The usual causes of bottlenecks are erros in making decisions that often lead to rework and time-consuming data collection activities. These errors also translate to every phase of the DMAIC. Thus, at the very start of any Six Sigma deployment, the team should focus on detecting and eliminating root causes. This is in fact a typical task of a Six Sigma project. Applying an alternative such as the I-TRIZ, a research-based improvement of classical TRIZ, may lead to an efficient and effective problem solving strategies.

Following are some points on how I-TRIZ enhances Six Sigma:

• Expands the TRIZ methodology to non-technical areas (business, management, scientific research, transactional processes, etc.) and adopts it to the Western world (i.e. mental-, cultural-, language-, business-, teaching-models, etc.).
• Provides knowledge-based integration of classical and new TRIZ tools and lines of evolution for higher repeatability, reproducability and re-usability of innovation processes and results.
• Expands classical TRIZ way of thinking towards so-called Directed Evolution.
• Provides advanced decision-support knowledge-based tools and E-learning.

Although the I-TRIZ methodology is the subject of further research, its incorportation into Six Sigma deployments is said to provide valuable user-feedback for adopting tools and knowledge bases and stimulates its further “directed evolution.”

As Six Sigma is pushing for continuous improvement, you as practitioners should also think of ways on how to enhance your process improvements. A combination of methodologies may just do the trick, too.

Source: Six Sigma Trends: Six Sigma Leadership And Innovation Using TRIZ

Filed under: Deployment, Tools/Toolkits

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TRIZ and Six Sigma

There is a new trend in Six Sigma these days, and that is incorporating TRIZ into the Six Sigma methodology. TRIZ (pronounced “TREEZ”) is the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.

The TRIZ Way for Creative Problem Solving

Photo from Wikipedia.

Among Six Sigma’s goals is reducing cost, yet still being able to do more in terms of improving processes to please the customer. The question now is: How could TRIZ Six Sigma help to plan and implement efficiently cost-reduction initiatives on a long-term basis?

OneSixSigma answers:

First it is reasonable to revisit, how we calculate Costs as a Primary Business Metric: Total Life Cost (TLC) of the Product/Service, i.e. total costs during it’s whole Life Cycle should be considered, including COPQs at all phases as well as COPQs of all changes implemented.

Second, it is important not only to monitor (Measure), to analyse but also to PREDICT! variation of the different contributors (turn keys) of these TLC costs along with the whole Product life cycle.

Third, apparently different improvement opportunities should be permanently evaluated, prioritized and considered including complete (re-)design of the product and decommissioning of the previous version.

Fourth, interdisciplinary project teams should be able to find efficient solutions and to implement the changes, which are sustainable long-term.

Continue reading…

Succeeding posts will talk about TRIZ and Six Sigma, and together how these two strategies make a whole lot of difference in the life of organizations.

Filed under: Deployment, Tools/Toolkits

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