Inventive TRIZ principle Local quality : examples from everyday life

Real life examples of applying the inventive TRIZ principle Local quality

Principles are the pillars on which our body of knowledge rests, not the methods, but the principles

 

By studying 200000 invention patents worldwide, Genrich Altshuller identified 40 inventive principles that he found to be behind all those inventions. This is the most widely known tool of TRIZ. Though Altshuller and his co-workers later developed a number of other tools in addition to the 40 principles, I believe:

“Principles are the pillars on which our body of knowledge rests, not the methods, but the principles.”

There is a reason for this: principles are abstract and so can be applied anywhere suitably. If you incorporate principles, be it inventive or be it value based, in your mindset, you are not bound by any set of processes prescribed by any method. Your own inherent problem solving ability will use the right principle at the right place to find the desired solution.

Awareness and practice of useful and believable principles make your whole mind more healthy and strong in decision making, the core function of mind (Sorry, is it preaching? If so, please pardon me, at this stage I don’t like to preach or teach, I like most to share that I know largely from my experiences).

I am a methodologist, but still I place methods below the principles layer because, a method kind of binds you in a step by step process restriction. As soon as you follow a step by step process, your mind loses the flexibility to think free. Your mind has enormous power. To unleash the power you have to give it food, take care of it and in return it will roam free and will give you unthought of treasures; such things that you never imagined possible.  

Of course you should follow a method, but follow it as a part of an approach that has much larger scope of analysis, option evaluation and generation of new ideas.

Without further delay we would now go straight into business talk. We would take up a rather less used principle:

Principle 3: Local quality

      Adapt the individual properties or parts of the object to the required local conditions: Handle grip of a motorcycle

This is just one description of the meaning of the principle, there can be similar others. It conveys the basic meaning in abstract form. You may wonder, even though you saw an example, how can I use it?

Remember,

“Before using a principle you must understand it” (for any principle this more abstract principle is valid).

How can you understand a principle? The first and foremost step is to find example around you where this principle is applied. The principle most probably has been applied unknowingly, but still it becomes clear to you that this is an example of application of the specific principle. Finding out yourself such examples is critically important to build knowledge that stays.

This is a very useful step for learning all concepts: first learn it in classroom, and then start finding its application or presence in the environment around you. Do not ignore the intangible environment at all—the domain of ideas. Tangible environment consists of the physical objects that you see or touch around you (Can you see air? Is it tangible?)

Story 1: Banknote denominations from ATMs

About seven minutes’ walk away from my house is the main junction in our place where the banks, shops, bus stand and other shops are available—though that is not exactly a commercial centre. Ours is a small place—most people, I perceive, do not belong to the high earner class (purely subjective statement; still it carries a sense of meaning).

One day first time I noticed a difficulty we were facing for the last few months:

The ATM at the main junction dispensed only 1000 rupee notes and it was a bother to get it changed into smaller denominations.

I tried another ATM nearer home, but it also behaved similarly. Though we were coping with it, it was still a bother. I made a written request to the bank manager regarding the difficulty, and then forgot the matter.

Recently I noticed that, as a rule:

The ATM at the main junction still dispenses 1000 rupee notes, but the ATM nearer to my house located in a not so affluent residential area, dispenses 500 rupee notes.

I was furthermore happy to discover a new ATM very near my home and it also dispensed 500 rupee notes only.

In short: The bank studied the demography of the localities and then tuned its banknote dispensing logic to the perceived affluence level of would be ATM customers in each locality.

Story 2: Interior house wall painting

Sometime back this happened, but still I remember it because of the surprise it gave me.

I was renovating my house. After all the activities I had reached the wall painting stage. There was no problem with the exterior wall painting, though colour choice was critical for the interior walls.

To keep things simple, I chose three colours for all the rooms: a colour like inside of oyster shell for the drawing room that opened up to a number of windows and doors, a deeper light cream yellow for a special room by the side of the drawing room and a still lighter cream yellow for the rest of the rooms. I wanted the special room colour to have a bit more yellow hue—it brightens up the room considerably that I have found through long experience.

The painting of the drawing room and the special room was finished simultaneously by the evening. Being a critical person, I examined the wall colour time to time and was satisfied. The subtle drawing room colour came out nearly exactly as I wanted. It looked slightly yellowish, but I accepted it.

When the painters had gone, it was evening. First I entered my lighted up drawing room. There was no yellow tinge—colour was wonderful. Then I entered the special room and switched on the light. It was bright white light and the room was smaller than the drawing room. I looked around with great astonishment. I couldn’t recognize the room—is it the room I saw in the morning? It looked awfully white—there was no hint of yellow at all. It was a real shock for me.

I called up my painter and invited him for a look-see. He lived nearby. We discussed and understood the behaviour of wall colour. Next day following a no-loophole method we rectified the situation completely.

Reason: The drawing room opened up to a lot of daylight during daytime. That made the oyster shell colour slightly yellowish. In the evening, in bright white light the yellow tinge disappeared.

In contrast, the special room was smaller and the bright white light in the smaller space made the light cream yellow purely off-white.

It was all local conditions—the size of the room, availability of daylight, and difference of colour effect between daylight and white light.

To generalize: if you understand local conditions very clearly (I call it also as context), you will be able to arrive at solutions that meet the desired objectives and make all concerned happy.   

In this space, I would go slow and sometimes a bit randomly. If you want to get a very thorough and exhaustive coverage on 40 TRIZ principles in business environment, please refer to the excellent article on the subject written by Darrell Mann and Ellen Domb, two of the leading teachers of TRIZ that we know of.

This article is very exhaustive article covers 40 Inventive (Business) Principles with Examples.

http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/1999/09/a/

TRIZ journal holds one of the richest resources in TRIZ domain and a must-see for any innovation specialist or a TRIZ practitioner or researcher.

Here I would like to differentiate between the general approaches and my approach. Generally and understandably all researches and pursuits of new knowledge, specially in the area of innovation, are targeted towards commercial domains. The reason is obvious: to carry out any serious pursuit of inquiry or research into a subject, one needs funding and the funding comes from commercial organizations with commercial interests.

I hold that innovation knowledge resources are for everyone, none excluded. A general awareness of and a few further inevitable actions on (such as practising finding out applications and actual application) innovation and problem solving using powerful principles, techniques or methods has the potential to increase the capability of any mind to solve problems. Innovation may not mean always a solution that is unique with least cost and great commercial importance. It can very well solve your personal problem!

TRIZ concepts should be very useful in the areas of research and development, business innovation, and also improving individual personal lives directly. 


Read my main blog on Innovation & Problem Solving and the other related blog on Innovation - Basic Principles

Introducing the powerful 40 inventive principles - the most popular TRIZ tool

Highly powerful Principles of Innovation from TRIZ system

The 40 TRIZ principles are abstract inventive principles identified by Russian scientist Altshuller to be the principles behind all past inventions and so he concluded that new innovations also will be based on these principles only. By deep study of 200000 patents, Altshulller arrived at this momentous result. These principles form the core component of TRIZ.

40 inventive principles of TRIZ

Principle 1: Segmentation:

     Divide into parts or sections of similar nature: water jet as a cutting tool

     Design an object using modules: a software

Principle 2: Taking out or Extraction:

    Extract the disturbing part or property from an object: Split air-conditioner

Principle 3: Local quality:

    Adapt the individual properties or parts of the object to the required local conditions: Handle grip of a motorcycle

Principle 4: Asymmetry:

     Increase asymmetry: fashion design

Principle 5: Merging, Consolidation or combining:

     Merge or combine similar objects, ideas or operations: microprocessor chip

Principle 6: Universality:  

    Eliminate other parts to combine all functionalities into one part; the single part acts universally for all functions: Swiss army knife

Principle 7: Nested doll:

    Russian nested doll has in it a smaller doll that again has a still smaller doll and so on: folding umbrella, telescopic camera tripod

Principle 8: Anti-weight:

    To compensate for the weight of an object, merge it with other objects that provide lift: Hot air or helium balloon

Principle 9: Preliminary anti-action:

    When it is necessary to perform an action with both harmful and useful effects, this should be replaced with anti-actions to control harmful effects: use masking tape when painting difficult edges

Principle 10: Preliminary action:

    Perform the required change of an object in advance: self-adhesive postage stamps

Principle 11: Beforehand cushioning: 

    Prepare emergency means beforehand to compensate for the relatively low reliability of an object: air-bag in a car

Principle 12: Equipotentiality:

    If an object has to be raised or lowered, redesign the object’s environment so the need to raise or lower is eliminated or performed by the environment: Place a heavy object on ice, and let ice melt in order to lower it. 

Principle 13: The other way round:

    Opposite way of acting: moving sidewalk with standing people

Principle 14: Spheroidality – Curvature:

    Move from flat surfaces to spherical ones: Use arches and domes for strength in architecture

Principle 15: Dynamics:

    Change the object (or outside environment) for optimal performance at every stage of operation: Gel fillings inside seat allow it to adapt to user 

Principle 16 : Partial or Excessive actions:

    If you can’t achieve 100 percent of a desired effect - then go for more or less: Over-fill holes with plaster and then rub back to smooth

Principle 17: Another dimension:

    Move into an additional dimension - from one to two - from two to three: 3D movies

Principle 18: Mechanical vibration:

     Cause an object to oscillate or vibrate: musical instrument

Principle 19: Periodic action:

    Instead of continuous action, use periodic or pulsating actions: Lighthouse lamp, siren  

Principle 20: Continuity of useful action:

    Carry on work without a break. All parts of an object operating constantly at full capacity:  Flywheel stores energy when a vehicle stops, so the motor can keep running at optimum power.

Principle 21: Skipping or Rushing Through:

    Conduct a process, or certain stages of it (e.g. destructible, harmful or hazardous operations) at high speed:  Flash photography 

Principle 22 : Blessing in disguise - Harm into benefit:

    Use harmful factors (particularly, harmful effects of the environment or surroundings) to achieve a positive effect : Use waste heat to generate electric power

 Principle 23: Feedback:

    Introduce feedback to improve a process or action: Automatic volume control in audio circuits

Principle 24: Intermediary/Mediator:

    Use an intermediary carrier article or intermediary process: property dealer  

Principle 25: Self-Service:

    An object must service itself by performing auxiliary helpful functions: drive-in restaurant 

Principle 26: Copying:

    Replace unavailable, expensive, fragile object with inexpensive copies: imitation jewellery

Principle 27: Cheap short-living objects:

    Replace an expensive object with a multiple of inexpensive objects, compromising certain qualities, such as service life: disposable nappies, paper cups etc. 

Principle 28: Mechanics substitution:

     Replace a mechanical system with a sensory one: retina scan

Principle 29: Pneumatics and hydraulics:

     Use gas and liquid parts of an object instead of solid parts (e.g. inflatable, filled with liquids, air cushion, hydrostatic, hydro-reactive): hovercraft

Principle 30: Flexible shells and thin films:

     Tarpaulin car cover instead of garage

Principle 31: Porous materials:

     Make an object porous or add porous elements (inserts, coatings, etc.)

Principle 32: Color changes:

    Change the colour of an object or its external environment: light sensitive sunglasses  

Principle 33: Homogeneity:

    Objects interacting with the main object should be of same material (or material with identical properties): Join wooden components using (wood) dowel joints

Principle 34: Rejecting, Discarding – Recovering, Regeneration:

    After completing their function (or becoming useless) reject objects, make them go away, (discard them by dissolving, evaporating, etc) or modify during the process: multi-stage rocket driven spaceship  

Principle 35: Parameter Changes:

    Change the physical state (e.g. to a gas, liquid, or solid): transport liquid petroleum gas 

Principle 36 : Phase transitions:

    Use phenomena of phase transitions (e.g. volume changes, loss or absorption of heat, etc.): superconductivity

Principle 37: Thermal expansion:

     Use thermal expansion, or contraction, of materials: Shrink-wrapping

Principle 38 : Accelerated oxidation:

    Replace common air with oxygen-enriched air: Place asthmatic patients in oxygen tent 

Principle 39 : Inert atmosphere:

    Replace a normal environment with an inert one: Vacuum packaging   

Principle 40: Composite materials:

    Change from uniform to composite (multiple) materials: Glass-reinforced plastic 

As you see the principles are too many, and on top of it, very abstract. It takes quite a lot of time to absorb the essence of these principles.

To do it, please go through the principles (get various forms of 40 principles from net), try to understand them and the least but not the least, try to find out from your environment clear application of one or more than one of the 40 inventive principles. If you identify yourself, your absorption of the principles will be better and quicker.

Remember, these principles are not only valuable for innovative idea generation, but also very useful in real life problem solving. 

Next session also we will dwell on TRIZ principles.



Read my main blog on Innovation & Problem Solving and the other related blog on Innovation - Basic Principles