|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
While many books have been published on the topic of innovation, The Elegant Solution by Mathew May explores Toyota Motor's formula for innovation. This book shares unknown aspects of Toyota Motors, the Toyota Production System (TPS) and the Toyota product development process. The "elegant solution" discussed in the book and TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) share many commonalities.
Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries, is often referred to as the father of the Japanese industrial revolution and the "King of Japanese Inventors." Toyoda's three principles for innovation are: ingenuity in craft, the pursuit of perfection and how the innovation fits into society. The elegant solution focuses on the idea that business innovation is about satisfaction and value, not new gadgetry. Elegance as defined by May is "simplicity found on the other side of complexity." The chief executive officer for JetBlue defined innovation as "trying to figure out a way to do something better than it's ever been done before." Innovation is solving the problem of how to do something better and this closely aligns itself with TRIZ, which is about solving problems.
May claims that learning must occur before innovation, and that learning and gaining new knowledge is the key to innovation. At Toyota learning comes first – perpetual learning is part of Toyota's DNA. Learning occurs in four phases: questioning, solving, experimenting and reflection. (This is a variant on the scientific method termed variously as plan-do-study-act (PDSA), observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) and scan-analyze-respond-assess (SARA).)
Seeing it for oneself is the key. Before defining the problem the first step is to understand the situation, grasp the facts and clearly articulate the problem. To clearly understand a problem requires discipline. The book discusses three ways to look at the problem:
The timing of an idea or innovation is important. The preoccupation with inventing may cause inventors to miss the clear and present needs of the world. Do not confuse an unarticulated need with a nonexistent one – designing for the unarticulated needs of today serves the purpose for tomorrow's innovation.
Making it visual is the generic theme seen in the Toyota Production System. Storytelling with pictures helps in innovation. Images connect minds to thoughts and ideas, and allows the ideas to develop.
The missing component in many pure-play technology solutions to problems is the perceptual, emotional or "soft side" values. Understanding intangible and soft-value parameters requires designing for personal needs and going beyond the obvious.
Innovation demands exploiting limits, not ignoring them. This is a lesson for resource rich organizations. Creating artificial limits and committing to these limits is essential for ingenuity to surface in Toyota. The "stretch" goal setting has four components – aligned, audacious, articulate and arduous.
Satisfy plus suffice is the equivalent of "good enough." This leads to solutions that just meet the goals. Breakthrough thinking comes from breaking through the mental barriers of good enough solutions. The most powerful tool is to purposefully create dynamic tension – setting opposing forces in direct competition or conflict. Mental blocks are hindrances and hide the breakthrough solution path. Dynamic tension helps identify and breakthrough these mental blocks.
Data aversion is the cause of many failures. Countering intuition with insight means digging into relevant data to help fight the dangers of bias, convention and instinct. Taiichi Ohno, the father of TPS, maintained that common sense is the enemy. The four-pronged antidote to fight intuition is:
Becoming truly objective is the goal.
Pursuing perfection requires great discipline – create a standard, follow it and find a better way. Kaizen is Japanese for continuous improvement. It is about idea submission, not acceptance. Kaizen is democratic and focuses on harnessing the human creative spirit. People innovate; companies do not.
For solving the complexity challenge, Toyota follows Lean thinking. Lean is about building the solution for the customer and driving out anything connected to complexity. Excess is "inelegant." Lean requires a precise understanding of value and then taking that value to the customers without complexity creeping in.
The Elegant Solution is one of a long series of books written on Toyota. There are also many books on Lean thinking or the Toyota way. The Elegant Solution describes the pure-play innovation formula of Toyota, which is a departure from the other books produced on Lean thinking. Other books about Toyota looked at their product development which has been examined as concurrent product development, evolutionary design approaches and set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). (This paper focuses on the "elegant solution" and how it maps to TRIZ. This is not a mapping of Lean production systems or Toyota's new product development process.)
TRIZ states that someone, somewhere, at sometime has solved the problem (or a similar problem) the practitioner is facing. It is now a much simpler task to search for the solution rather than creating a whole new one based on an individual perspective. By abstracting the inventiveness of thousands of inventors, TRIZ brings to the problem solver a plethora of robust techniques and methods that have worked historically.
From the study of millions of patents and inventions Genrich Altshuller, the father of TRIZ, with the assistance of his colleagues discovered that the evolution of a technical system is not a random process, but is governed by certain objective laws. These laws can be used to consciously develop a system along its path of technical evolution – by determining and implementing innovations. TRIZ distinguishes two main parts of problem solving: 1) problem description or definition and 2) its solution:
Table 1 lists techniques and tools of TRIZ applicable at various stages of problem solving. The table includes TRIZ tools that might have been influenced by other fields and not just the classical TRIZ techniques.
| Table 1: Summary of Main TRIZ Tools for Problem Formulation and Solution | |
| TRIZ Tools for Problem Formulation | TRIZ Tools for Problem Solving |
| Focus on function – the main useful function that the solution needs to deliver to meet a customer/user's need. | Technical contradictions – inventive principles – when two parameters interact with each other and one cannot have the best value of both parameters. |
| Value is nothing but function delivered to meet a user need. | Physical contradictions – when the problem is to have a different value for the same parameter, e.g., a coffee mug needs to be hot inside, but cold outside. |
| Ideal final result – value delivered at no cost or resource expenditure and not harming the system in anyway, alternately the function is achieved on its own – a self-functioning system. Further the ideal solution should create an ideal system structure that is the least complex. | Trends of evolution – Altshuller originally identified eight trends. These have since been expanded by other researchers. |
| How does the problem/situation look in space and time? Use the 9-windows/screens approach. | Resources – are all the resources utilized fully – even the harmful resources? |
| How does the problem look in depth and scope? – Use the why-what recursive hierarchy. | Knowledge and effects is the codified knowledge of how others have achieved a particular function, e.g., cleaning solids. |
| What are the resources available, and what are the constraints in and around the problem? | Ideal final result – how to take the system closer to the IFR rather than focusing on current issues. Can a method be devised to achieve IFR? |
| Function and attribute analysis | Substance fields and standard solutions |
| S-curve analysis – where the field is on the S-curve and where the product/solution that needs to be designed for customer needs should focus | Psychological inertia tools that TRIZ has to take the inventors mind away from the tunnels of core competence that restricts exploration of other fields |
| Anticipatory failure determination (AFD) or subversion analysis – inventing failures to create robust designs | |
TRIZ and elegant solution practices overlap in many areas.
Table 2 summarizes this analysis.
| Table 2: Toyota's Elegant Solution Practice Mapped to TRIZ | |
| Toyota's Elegant Solution Practice | Predominant Equivalent TRIZ Tools |
| Learning as the basis of innovation | Knowledge categorization/solution categorization from multiple fields |
| Genchi genbutsu; see for yourself | 9-windows and ideality |
| Master the tension | Technical and physical contradictions |
| Think in pictures | 9-windows, function maps, mapping the current system on trends (or laws) of evolution |
| Leverage the limits | Continuously finding root contradictions and eliminating these for moving towards ideality using STC |
| Keeping it Lean | Maximize value – approaching ideal system state |
The preliminary analysis indicates a sufficient level of overlap in the two approaches – yet for a holistic framework one can learn from both approaches to develop a comprehensive innovation framework..
TRIZ and the elegant solution practices described in the book by Mathew May have considerable overlap. While the two practices have similarities and differences the final innovation methodology – the ultimate framework (if there is a grand innovation theory) has multiple paths that lead to the same solution if one pursues excellence. The author believes there is the potential for a considerable kick to innovators willing to mix the elegant solution and TRIZ into a new cocktail.
Navneet Bhushan is the founder / director of an innovation co-creating firm, Crafitti Consulting Pvt Ltd. He has worked close to two decades in managing and developing IT, innovation and productivity solutions and has worked in large commercial and government organizations. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making - Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer, UK, 2004. His current research interests include complexity, open innovation and globalization. He is a visiting faculty member at Welingkar School of Business Management. Contact Navneet Bhushan at navneet.bhushan (at) crafitti.com or visit http://www.crafitti.com.