Several researchers have reported on the effectiveness of knowledge-based inventive stimuli, known in the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), in enhancing engineering creativity, but few authors have focused on the comparative analysis of structured ideation in engineering design in terms of quantitative and qualitative outcomes. Previous studies have mainly concentrated on the investigation of exemplary selected single stimuli rather than on a critical assessment of the relationship between the structured application of inventive stimuli and their contribution to engineering design. The paper describes a method for the automated formulation of elementary creative stimuli for product or process design at different levels of abstraction and in different engineering domains. The experimental study evaluates the impact of structured automated idea generation on inventive thinking in engineering design and compares it with previous experimental studies in educational and industrial settings. The outlook highlights the benefits of using automated ideation in the context of AI-assisted invention and innovation.

Although TRIZ is widely acknowledged as a powerful aid to improve efficacy and efficiency of the creative design process, practitioners diffusedly experience difficulties in the selection of the most suitable tool. Such an issue represents a severe limitation in consideration of the large number of tools TRIZ offers. Here, Inventive Principles (IPs) are acknowledged as the most popular TRIZ technique, and their conjointly use with the Contradiction Matrix makes the selection of the appropriate IP a sufficiently supported task. However, the reliability of the Contradiction Matrix is often questioned and an agreement on a solid and reliable procedure for the selection of IPs is far from being reached. In such a context, the paper investigates the recurrence of IPs to solve contradictions, with reference to a classification framework that takes into consideration the nature of the problem to be solved and the technical-scientific domain it belongs to. The outcomes of the analysis reveal that leveraged IPs are considerably related with the technical-scientific domain and the nature of the problem to be solved. The found relationships are worth delving into and translating into selection guidelines.

High stiffness fracture fixation devices inducing absolute stability, activate inefficient primary healing and stress shielding. Taking High Tibial Osteotomy as a representative example, review of the clinical literature and mapping the fracture healing process revealed two physically contradicting requirements, which are only partially met by current techniques. Stiffness of the fixation is required immediately after fracture, however in the remodelling phase this can cause stress shielding. Stability is required immediately after fracture, however in the ossification phase less stability is required to stimulate secondary (and more efficient) healing. This study evaluates the use of the TRIZ Inventive Design Principles to overcome these physical contradictions. Six designs concepts were evaluated, of which the Macro-Geometry stiffness modulated design was ranked the highest. This was achieved through spatial decomposition of the problem utilising the Inventive Principles of Asymmetry, Extraction and Local Quality. This study offer perspectives on how to increase the patient specificity of fixation utilising the increased topology freedom of design for additive manufacture (AM).

This paper presents an eco-innovation method by revised the “Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD)” method which is the failure analysis tools in TRIZ theory. Using the functional analysis to list the system process and make the functional analysis model. Based on the environmental efficiency factors and functional analysis model, Substance-Field inverse analysis can find a lot of failure modes in the system. In order to assess the priority of risk improvement, the designer can calculate the environmental risk priority number including controlling documents, public image and environmental consequences. Designer can quickly find out the potential failure mode in the complex engineering system with the systematic steps. The TRIZ methods are used for finding eco-innovation idea to solve failure problem. The capability of the whole eco-innovative design process was illustrated by the electrical motorcycle case.

A Contradiction Matrix of TRIZ that classifies problems to solve as contradictions of features is an effective framework of knowledge management for problem solving. The features, however, may have a problem of completeness because they may not cover contradictions about all physical phenomena. In addition, rigidly structured Contradiction Matrix may have a problem of searchability because a relevant contradiction may not be properly searched if a recorder and a retriever describe it differently. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a semistructured contradiction matrix using not TRIZ features but physical quantities in SI unit. To enable not only exact match but also partial match in searching for relevant contradictions, dimensional similarity and qualitative value similarity of physical quantity and similarity between contradictions are defined. The proposed method is implemented as software in Python and contradictions are described in XML and stored in a semistructured matrix. From the result of similarity calculation between stored contradictions, possible effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed.

Understanding product functions is a key aspect of the work undertaken by engineers involved in complex system design. The support offered to these engineers by existing modeling tools such as the function tree and the function structure is limited because they are not intuitive and do not scale well to deal with real-world engineering problems. A research collaboration between two universities and a major power system company in the aerospace domain has allowed the authors to further develop a method for function analysis known as function analysis diagram that was already in use by line engineers. The capability to generate and edit these diagrams was implemented in the Decision Rationale editor, a software tool for capturing design rationale. This article presents the intended benefits of the method and justifies them using an engineering case study. The results of the research have shown that the function analysis diagram method has a simple notation, permits the modeling of product functions together with structure, allows the generation of rich and accurate descriptions of product functionality, is useful to work with variant and adaptive design tasks, and can coexist with other functional modeling methods.