Structured Problem Solving Using TRIZ

The structured problem solving course, Problem Solving with TRIZ, was offered on-site at New Mexico Tech with synchronous, off-site participation. The course ran from January 23, 2008 to April 20, 2008, meeting approximately 2.5 hours per week. The distance delivery employed a combination of technologies including Polycom videoconferencing, Adobe Connect, document camera (Elmo), and Smart Board touchscreen large-format computer monitor. Remote participants interacted with the NMT group with Polycom videoconferencing where able, or otherwise with text chat. The goal of producing a multimedia-intensive, interactive, seminar-format course, rather than a broadcast-format course, was and remains a challenging one, given the multiple technologies required (streaming video, displaying and marking up computer documents produced with various programs on different platforms, etc.) Fortunately, one of the course participants was also an employee of the NMT Distance Education office, and he did an excellent job configuring and reconfiguring systems and finding ways for disparate technologies to talk with each other.

The course covered elementary and intermediate techniques of TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) for concept generation and added problem-definition tools that enable the problem solver to select, with high confidence, tools and approaches to solve difficult engineering problems. TRIZ practitioners have found that non-optimal solutions to problems are very common, even in small teams with experience and expertise, largely because of the nearly universal tendency to “jump to solutions.” One significant benefit of offering the Problem Solving with TRIZ course over a period of months instead of days was that participants developed their ability to spend more time in the relatively uncomfortable problem definition phase of problem solving before jumping in with proposed solutions. At the end of the course, participants evaluated themselves as more confident than before that they could generate or contribute to outstanding solutions to challenging engineering problems.

Douglas Dunston (New Mexico Tech), the instructor for Problem Solving with TRIZ, may be reached at TRIZdesign@mac.com