Editor | On 02, May 2009

Ellen Domb

Great news! Toru Nakagawa has announced that the Award-winning presentations of the Japan TRIZ Symposium 2008 are now publicly posted in their Official Pages, in the form of PDF slides both in English and in Japanese. http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/

Because these are slide presentations, not articles, we don’t publish them in The TRIZ Journal, but there is a lot of excellent TRIZ work that is shared at the conference, and this is a way that our readers can get some benefit. (OK, you know that in every “Commentary” I will remind readers to GO to conferences for the full benefit, but I also recognize that we can’t all travel all the time!)  

In the last Japan TRIZ Symposium, Japanese participants were requested to vote for ’Best Presentation for Me’ among the presentations given by Japanese authors. The top three of oral presentations and poster presentations, respectively, were chosen. Professor Nakagawa has done the TRIZ community a great service by posting his summary and introduction to all the papers in English in his ’Personal Report’ on the conference (posted Oct. 26, 2008). I’m quoting some extracts from the summary of the award-winning papers here, so that the Commentary readers will know the kind of work that was presented at the 2008 conference, and so that readers can make plans now to go to Japan for the Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, to be held on September 10-12, 2009 in Saitama, near Tokyo. 

1. Oral 1st Place: “Why Water Striders can stand and slide on the Water?: A Summer Homework by Son and Father with TRIZ” by Taichiro Miyanishi (2nd Grader, Kenroku Junior High School/Son), Katsuya Miyanishi (Father) – The story presented at the Symposium started when a 12 year boy, Taichiro, said to his father: “As summer homework, I want to learn why water striders can stand and slide on the water surface.” They tried to think of various ideas for standing on the water surface, with reference to various phenomena and effects. Then they checked their ideas at the library, and further built toy models of water striders with the materials available at home. Thus their work is neither a book/Internet survey of knowledge, nor observation of the facts, but rather idea generation and verification on the basis of TRIZ thinking.


2. Oral 2nd Place: “Case Study of Introducing and Applying TRIZ to Real
   Projects for Obtaining Results (= Benefits): Innovating the Product Development Process by use  of QFD, TRIZ, and TM together” BY Tomohiko Katagiri, Toshiaki Tsuchizawa and Takeshi Yamanouchi (Koganei Co., Ltd.) – Koganei Co. is a manufacturer of aero pneumatic equipments, having about 800 employees. Under the severe competitive situations, the authors were convinced two years ago of the needs of innovating their product development process. Thus they started to introduce and apply the set of QFD, TRIZ and TM (Taguchi Method) to their three pilot projects.


3. Oral 3rd Place: “Usage of TRIZ and USIT in Developing a Novel Duplex
   Printing Machine” by Hiroshi Kanno (Tohoku RICOH Co., Ltd.) – The author describes the whole story of TRIZ-based thinking during the development of a world-first Automatic Dual Digital Duplicator, which is an inexpensive high-performance printing machine based on mimeography. Since mimeography uses pseudo-drying without any special image fixation process, it was difficult to print on the back side of the wet-ink printed paper without getting dirty. With the basic TRIZ concepts of mini-problems, resources of vacant space, etc., the author developed a novel idea of printing two sides on a single drum. The wet-ink problem was solved with SLP, where a few tall SLP on the roller get dirty for protecting many small SLP and their tiny spots on the printed paper can not be recognized by people. The author learned USIT as well and used USIT much in solving subsequent problems. Their new machine can print 240 A4 pages/min on both sides, doubling the former 120 pages/min on single side, with essentially the same machine size. This project has made the customers’ 20-year dream of easy dual printing a reality.


4. Poster 1st Place: “Contemporary Issues of TRIZ to be a Scientific Method” by Shinsuke Kurosawa (The SANNO Institute of Management)


5. Poster 2nd Place: “Introduction to ISW (Idea Search Working) Activities: Learning, Applying and Penetrating TRIZ” by Fumiko Kikuchi and Akio Fukushima (Pioneer Corp.)


6. Poster 3rd Place: “Practical Application of TRIZ to Novel Electrical    Devices Development” by Shuji Wakaiki, Koichirou Adachi, and Hiroshi Kotaki (SHARP Corporation)


7. Poster 3rd Place: ”From Idea Creation to Patent Acquisition by TRIZ:    For Improving the Living Situations Just after the Evacuation from Natural Disaster” Toshimitsu Kataoka (Patbrain Co.,LTD), Yuji Mihara  (Creative Technology Institute Co., LTD)

My thanks to Toru Nakagawa for all his work promoting the conference and providing the English-speaking world with access to the creative and constructive uses of TRIZ in Japan. This is a very time-consuming and intellectually demanding task, and he has done a beautiful job. I encourage our Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers to take advantage of all his work, and the work of the Symposium authors.
http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/