Leveraging TRIZ for Effective Structured Innovation and Process Improvement

TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) can provide a structure for problem solving and innovation for your organization. In this Profit through Process podcast, Genna Weiss of Six Sigma IQ speaks with Ray Hemmele, Director at SSA & Company (formerly Six Sigma Academy), who discusses how TRIZ can enable your company to more effectively innovate and improve its processes.

Hemmele explains how TRIZ can be looked at as an algorithm or a structured process that your organization can follow. He notes the advantage that TRIZ has over classic brainstorming for innovation and process improvement and relates how this structured innovation methodology allows your organization to open up the solution space for its pressing problems. Using a case study as an example, Hemmele introduces several basic TRIZ tools, including Ideal Final Result, which looks at a problem or process from the outcome standpoint, and Nine-Screens or System Operator, which allows you to think forward and backward in time and look at a problem from the lower level and super-system level.

In addition, Hemmele reveals how TRIZ deployment support can come from both the top-down level and the grassroots level, and he shows how this structured innovation methodology can complement other process improvement methodologies—such as Lean and Six Sigma—that are already in place within your organization.