May 2003 Mfg.Trust

Mfg.Trust is a monthly feature of the
            NCMS InfraGard Manufacturing Industry Association
                        Infrastructure assurance for manufacturers
                                    Powered by NCMS.

This month – Proactive Failure Prediction

See the Resources Page for this Story 

Editor's Preface:

Mind expanding. Anything “mind expanding” appears painful and stressful to my linear, Western, engineering-trained self. The Proactive Failure Prediction techniques that are the subject of this month’s Mfg.Trust feature are an application of a methodology called “TRIZ” that is indeed “mind expanding,” and frankly quite unusual to Western minds.

The application of these techniques to security and emergency management problems was the topic of a recent NCMS workshop that drew industry practitioners to examine how they could change the way they think about solving problems, introduce new ways to think about failure analysis / prediction, and future planning. It was – mind expanding.

NCMS’ InfraGard Manufacturing Industry Association sponsored this event as a community service because Proactive Failure Prediction is a hot topic among industry experts concerned with infrastructure, data, or property protection issues and emergency response in these same areas. This new approach shows promise as a successor to “classical” failure analysis / prediction techniques such as QFD or FMEA.

The resources from that workshop are available to you in the Resources Page that accompanies this article at http://trust.ncms.org (see Publications Index tab).
 

Editor

Proactive Failure Prediction (Reverse "TRIZ")

A Condensed History

TRIZ is a Russian acronym for “Theoria Resheneyva Isobretatelskehuh Zadach,” or “Theory of Solving Problems Inventively.” This is a discovery of a brilliant patent examiner for the Russian Navy, Genrich Altshuller, in the 1950’s. He studied hundreds of thousands of patents and recognized that the development of technological systems follows predictable patterns that cut across ALL areas of technology. He recognized that problem solving principles are also predictable and repeatable, that anyone can invent! Altshuller established schools to teach TRIZ.

First, “Regular” TRIZ

Understanding TRIZ techniques requires more detail than is presented in a few sentences here. To begin to grasp the concepts, you need to review the presentation that explains TRIZ and Reverse TRIZ. It is found in the Resources page that accompanies this feature. Hopefully, the synopsis that follows here will whet your appetite.

TRIZ methods bring organization to certain classes of problems. Simple engineering design does not warrant the “high powered” TRIZ methodology; and TRIZ is not so good that it will produce new science. However, in the middle ground of difficult problem solving TRIZ is useful. Simple contradictions, difficult design and manufacturing contradictions, and extremely difficult system design problems are well suited to the technique. Difficult system problems may require looking at hundreds of thousands of potential solutions and require many years of effort within an organization.

“Reverse” TRIZ

“Reverse” TRIZ was developed around 1970. Rather than pose the question “How can we make this work?” for the purpose of invention or resolving conflicting principles, it asks “How can we make sure this never works?” for the purpose of examining failure prediction issues.

People react with enthusiasm to such an approach! If you were to gather the people who know and understand a system best – those knowledgeable folks who maintain and operate it – the challenge to “really do this system in” is engaging. The results are often scary and should be carefully protected while you decide - with these same knowledgeable people - how to minimize the vulnerabilities uncovered.

There is a catch. Be warned that posing these questions without a methodology for channeling the results often produces chaotic results. TRIZ is an important tool for getting useful results out of what will otherwise be a free form exercise.

Conclusions

Major manufacturing businesses, as well as those in pharmaceuticals, electric power, banking and myriad other fields have started to embrace Proactive Failure Prediction techniques based on reversing TRIZ concepts. They are adopting this powerful approach to critical infrastructure protection and emergency management because it handles complexity and abstractness so well. Information security is one area in particular where the complexity and/or abstractness of the problems offer real challenges to improving the security of an enterprise environment.

TRIZ is a useful tool. It compares favorably with QFD, FMEA and other tools for analyzing complex systems, although there are initial hurdles which Western thinkers must overcome before the tool is useful to them. First, it takes time to learn and practice. Second, it is time consuming on the problem definition side.

TRIZ pays dividends, but some people prefer to solve the wrong problem several times, perhaps to appear to be doing something all the time.

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