Improving Inventive Design Methodology’s Agility

Abstract

Inventive Design (ID) methodology has been developed in four main phases, from initial situation analysis to solution concept, in order to overcome TRIZ limitations. However, this methodology needs to optimize its performance, because it takes a lot of time to obtain the best solution concepts. In addition, the ability of ID to give the best result depends on individual knowledge and experience of designer, and correctness of initial situation analysis. The proposed methodology in this article uses a collection of tools and combines a long-term vision for continuous improvement. This improvement method focuses on removing the non-value added activities during the process and maximizing the quality of the results. Integration of this proposed methodology with ID framework will eliminate the wastes, which occur in different phases of ID method and increase its overall efficiency and agility.

IPG as a new method to improve the agility of the initial analysis of the inventive design

“…This is mainly due to the implicit research in each study to construct a complete map of a problem situation by interviewing experts involved in the study and extracting all their knowledge, regardless of how effective it is in solving the problem. This stage leads to lots of contradictions that only some of which are used in the final phase to obtain the solution [19]. Therefore, it was necessary to combine IDM with other methodologies that give its process the characteristics of an agile methodology, including the capacity for iterative development and the capability to generate a rapid and flexible response to change [20].…”

“…This stage leads to lots of contradictions that only some of which are used in the final phase to obtain the solution [19]. Therefore, it was necessary to combine IDM with other methodologies that give its process the characteristics of an agile methodology, including the capacity for iterative development and the capability to generate a rapid and flexible response to change [20]. One such methodology is the Lean method.…”

“…However, their authors emphasized on the implementation of the same principles in other industrial sectors, such as innovation, in order to eliminate non-value-adding activities within a process to achieve excellence [24]. Hence, in [19], the authors applied Lean principles to IDM.…”

“…The authors in [19] did not go into the details of an operational functioning method. Therefore, in this article, we show how to apply these Lean principles to optimize IDM.…”

“…In this article, the Lean principles, particularly the third and the fourth one, encouraged us to develop a method for the initial analysis phase that gives the characteristics of agile methodologies, such as iterative and evolutionary development, to IDM. For this purpose, we firstly analyzed the result of the research of [19], in which the authors highlighted the Value Added, Non-Value Added activities related to the phases of the IDM framework, to understand the drawbacks of each phase. The authors in their analysis showed that designers should collect and analyze all the data and partial solutions without paying attention to their use in the solution step.…”