Improving systems by removing stuff

All of the TRIZ tools and processes are geared towards improving Ideality.

Ideality is the TRIZ measure of how good something is. Ideality is the ratio between all the benefits that you want and all the inputs required to create it (the costs) and the outcomes you don’t want (the harms). You can think of it as a simple equation:

Ideality = Benefits / Costs + Harms

Systems improve as they get more benefits with fewer costs and fewer harms. Trimming improves systems by focusing on reducing the bottom half of the Ideality equation: if you can remove parts of your system but somehow still get all the same or even more benefits, then you reduce costs without making your system worse, and may have made it better. And you do so by focusing on functions: your costs are the inputs required to deliver functions, which give you benefits and harms, as shown in Figure 14-1 (you’ll find a similar-looking diagram in Chapter 5, but see if you can spot the differences!).

When you trim, you remove components from your system, losing all their costs and all their harmful functions but always aiming to keep their useful functions – which are delivering benefits.

One of the reasons Trimming is such a powerful problem-solving tool is that it provides you with a structured approach to dramatically altering your system, by getting rid of the most troublesome and expensive parts. Trimming encourages you to deal with problems by removing their causes completely, rather than trying to make small changes to manage the subsequent downsides. It’s the first suggestion for dealing with harms in the Standard Solutions because it’s the most radical (Chapter 13 covers the less radical Standard Solutions).

Trimming fits very well with other problem-solving approaches, such as Lean manufacturing, which look for ways to make products and processes more efficient by reducing time and resources required and reducing waste. Trimming Rules are very popular with Lean professionals for this reason: when Lean tells you that something should be removed (the ‘what’), the Trimming Rules suggest a number of ways in which this can be done (the ‘how’). Trimming works by transferring responsibility from the component you’re removing to other parts of your system, and a number of strategies exist for doing so, as shown in Figure 14-2.

Before you can start Trimming, you need to complete a Function Map (see Chapter 12): you then have a clear idea of all the components in your system and can work out how to remove some of them by transferring their useful actions to other parts of the system. With a completed Function Map you can allay the fears of colleagues or employees whose response to a proposed change is, ‘We can’t remove that; we need it!’ The Function Map shows them that its actions will be carried out elsewhere in the system. When you go through the Trimming Rules, you can then work out alternative ways of getting all the things you need, thus delivering innovation without risk.

What’s useful about this process is that it’s a systematic way of breaking the perceived connection between the functions you want and the current system that’s delivering those functions. Before you can start transferring responsibility within your system, you first need to complete a Function Analysis of that system: you start Trimming from a Function Map.

TRIZ Function Analysis is the process of understanding and capturing the functions (both good and bad) of your system. A Function Map is the picture that you create by the end of this process (Chapter 12 takes you through the steps).

By completing this process you ensure that you really understand how your system works because you capture all of its functions. This allows you to understand how all the different parts of your system work together, which bits are doing useful things and where the problems are located.

A Function Map captures four kinds of actions: useful actions, insufficient useful actions, harmful actions and excessive actions. When you remove a component, it no longer performs any of the harmful actions (which is good) but you also lose its useful actions (which is bad). What makes Trimming clever is that it makes you look for ways to remove a component but keep all its useful actions, which is why you need to complete a Function Analysis first. You need to understand all the useful actions each component delivers, so that when you remove it you can ensure you don’t lose anything useful the component delivers. You need to transfer even insufficient and excessive useful actions, because in the process you may find ways to improve the insufficient actions and reduce the excessive actions so that they’re simply useful.

A Function Map comprises a series of Subject–action–Object relationships. Trimming involves removing the Subject of any one of these interactions and finding something else that will deliver the action–Object (the function). In this way, you transfer the functionality of each component to something else – one action at a time. If a component is delivering three useful actions, you go through the Trimming Rules for each, generating as many ideas as possible.

Clever cost-cutting: Doing more with less

Trimming provides you with systematic prompts to get all the things you need. It enables you to cut costs intelligently by understanding the functions you need and finding new ways to deliver them.

Anyone can cut costs and reduce benefits at the same time. What’s really clever is cutting costs without losing anything useful, and the Trimming Rules provide you with a systematic method not just for doing that but also simultaneously increasing benefits. This is one of the reasons why TRIZ innovation is so important, especially when times are tough: when budgets are slashed and people made redundant, that’s not the time to continue with business as usual. During lean times, you’re often pressured to deliver the same output but with fewer resources. You thus need to find a way of doing at least all the things you used to (more if possible), but with less. Commercial pressures may affect mature products and promising new products and concepts – both are vulnerable to cost-cutting initiatives and the latter may fail to reach the market if they can’t be produced cheaply enough. While traditional methods can assist with incremental cost-cutting, when you’re expected to deliver significant cost reductions, you need TRIZ’s Trimming Rules.

By understanding your system – whether a jet engine or department of people – in terms of its functions, you can model the useful outputs every part of it delivers. Rather than focusing on the details of how your system currently operates, modelling its functionality allows you to uncover problems and identify all the good things currently in existence. You can then consider whether you can change your system by reducing it in size: removing components one at a time but without losing any useful outputs. When you’ve mapped how everything in your system works, you’ve captured all the things your system currently delivers. These are the things you really want, and the components of your system are just one way of gaining them. Knowing this, you can begin to trim and reduce costs without making anything else worse. Indeed, you may actually produce benefits: reducing the weight of a car, for example, not only decreases the materials needed but can also increase acceleration; trimming out unnecessary meetings can increase productivity because that time can be spent doing other work.

The Trimming Rules prompt you to find other (and often better) ways of delivering all those useful functions. They also point you to specific places to discover those other ways. The Trimming Rules are also iterative: you don’t stop when you’ve removed a single component; you keep Trimming until you’ve removed as many components as possible.

What often happens is that when one or two components can be removed, a whole new way of delivering what you want often becomes an option. At this point, you’re not only finding new solutions and new ways of getting what you want, but also asking new questions that may uncover new opportunities. Don’t stop at this point. Redraw your new system as a new Function Map and trim again. You may find new locations in which to use your system and new functions, potentially providing significantly more benefits as well as fewer costs and harms.

Sometimes during the Trimming process people start ‘smuggling’ new components into the system. When something’s been removed and a new way of doing things suggested, they may see something else that could also be delivered by the system – provided another component is surreptitiously added. That’s okay. Add in the new component and its extra useful outputs as a means of capturing the new functions you want. Then try to trim the new component! You may end up with a trimmed system that gives you more of what you want rather than less – but with fewer components at the end of the process. Consider coffee shops: they often have milk delivered in floppy plastic bags rather than plastic bottles. The milk is then transferred into rigid, reusable plastic jugs that are easy to stand on the counter and pour from, and to store in the fridge. This system is clearly the result of an attempt to trim in space. Floppy bags take up much less room than plastic bottles but are difficult to store when opened. To make this floppy bag system work, another component has been smuggled in: the new plastic jug. One of the functions required of a bottle – rigidity – has been transferred to this new component.

Using resources wisely

In order to trim effectively, be aware of all your available resources. One of the Trimming Rules suggests transferring responsibility for an action to a resource, and in order to do so, you first have to be aware of all the resources that exist! Listing your resources before commencing Trimming is a good idea. While you can just jot them down on a piece of paper, consider capturing all your resources in your Function Analysis. Next to each component, list the resources available for that component. When you start trimming and want to transfer the useful action to a resource, you can then begin with resources close to the component you’re trimming.

Chapter 5 covers in detail how to capture resources; here, we simply point out that the most useful prompts are

• Super-system and environment
• System features
• Sub-system and component resources
• Time
• Space
• Harms and waste
• Knowledge, experience and feelings

Before you start Trimming, list all your resources, so that when you come to that step in the Trimming Rules, you can keep thinking fast.

Applying the Trimming Rules

Here’s a concrete example to help you see how to apply Trimming Rules.

Many hotels provide a mini-bar for their guests. If the hotel’s information literature hasn’t already informed you, the hum of the fridge often notifies you of its presence – and as soon as you know it’s there, you’re tempted to look inside. A cool, refreshing drink may be just the thing after a long, tiring journey! However, one look at the high prices may put you off; the appealing little bottles and cans are often much more expensive than their equivalents in the hotel bar. But, you reason with yourself, they do have the virtue of being instantly available in your room, day and night.

The Prime Function of this system is to ensure that drinks are available to refresh the guest. The mini-bar delivers the Prime Function by providing refrigerated drinks in the hotel room. The drinks are expensive, which is good for the hotel because they generate income, but bad for the guest because it impoverishes her. The secondary functions of the mini-bar are to inform the guests that drinks are available and to tempt them to buy them.

The mini-bar also, however, requires inputs. It needs electricity, and its contents must be replenished daily by hotel staff and charged to the right bill How can you improve this system by making it simpler but without losing all the benefits?

The Function Map in Figure 14-3 gives you some ideas.

You need to follow the Trimming Rules to improve this system. First, you need to select a place to start Trimming, for example with:

• Components that create lots of problems (generate harms)
• Components that have low Ideality: they deliver few useful actions and are associated with lots of costs and harms
• The Prime Function: for more incremental problem solving, start far away from the Prime Function; for more radical problem solving, start close to the Prime Function

The mini-bar seems to have two problems (it creates noise and requires energy input) and it doesn’t deliver the Prime Function. The mini-bar is therefore a good place to start.

Before trimming you need to capture all possible resources:

• Super-system and environment: Corridors, lifts, bar, reception, staff, kitchen, other local businesses/bars
• System features: Hotel room
• Sub-system and component resources: Cupboards, air-conditioning unit, TV, hotel information brochure
• Time: When booking, checking in, walking to room from reception
• Space: Inside and outside room
• Harms and waste: Waste from drink storage, expense, noise from and energy use of refrigerator
• Knowledge, experience and feelings: Of staff and guests

You then need to list the useful actions the mini-bar delivers. The Function Map in Figure 14-3 suggests that the mini-bar provides four main useful actions: it cools and stores high-priced drinks, and informs and tempts guests. You now work through the Trimming Rules for each of these four actions, asking yourself whether these useful actions can be delivered in other ways. When you find an answer, don’t stop; simply capture it and move on to the next suggestion. If you were tackling this problem in real life, you’d work through each of the four actions in turn; here, however, Table 14-1 presents suggestions for all four, organised according to which Trimming Rule is being applied.

Following the process and going off-piste

As with many of the TRIZ tools, the Trimming Rules provide you with a clear set of steps that should be followed in a certain order. However, when you start generating ideas, you may well find yourself taking off in interesting directions that may not seem to be related to the task in hand.

The Trimming Rules aim to make you think of other ways to get what you want. So, if you discover a rich seam of new ideas that lead you in interesting, useful directions, by all means follow them, as long as you’re continuing to think of new solutions and generate interesting suggestions and points for discussion.

This seam will naturally begin to yield diminishing returns and eventually you will run out of steam: at this point you need to return to the process. Following the steps of the Trimming Rules ensures that you cover every possible solution. If you think of solutions that don’t appear to be related to the TRIZ task at hand, that’s fine; don’t waste energy trying to reverse fit them into the process, just keep going and return to following the steps.

Going off-piste for short periods of time is fine if you’re usefully coming up with new solutions. However, always return to the process to make sure you don’t stop prematurely. Just because you’ve already thought of good ideas doesn’t mean you won’t think of better ones – allow yourself to be surprised! Following the process means that you can be confident that you’ve looked for every possible solution.

Getting round someone else’s patent

If you’re seeking radically new concepts, you need to relentlessly trim. You should also actively look for ways in which to smuggle in new components – which will deliver new, but currently missing, functions. Completing an Ideal Outcome (go to Chapter 9 for details) will also help you spot benefits that your existing system doesn’t currently deliver. And translating those benefits into functions will identify the action–Object you’re looking for. You can then consider solutions that will provide that action–Object (using the Effects Database covered in Chapter 6). Even better, you can think of a solution and then trim it out! Ultimately, you’ll end up with a very strong concept that’s profoundly different to the system you started out with in terms of functionality and design. When you’re Trimming to produce radically new concepts, you need to start with components that are closest to the Prime Function. Removing these components will prompt you to consider drastically new ideas and ways of doing things.

When people talk about patent circumvention, they usually mean that they’re looking for a small change to make to a product so that their invention doesn’t infringe an existing patent. However, in my experience, patent issues usually arise when one person discovers that someone else’s patent is blocking something she wants to do.

One approach to patent issues (that’s less vulnerable to the decisions of the courts) is to come up with a new concept that’s so fundamentally different in its operation that it no longer bears any resemblance to the original patent. This is why TRIZ Function Analysis followed by Trimming is such a powerful approach to invention: even though you start with a real, existing system, by the time you’ve removed multiple components, you’ve often come up with radically different and innovative concepts. Your Function Map has helped you see all the good things that someone else’s existing system delivers but you’ve developed, improved and simplified it by removing components while simultaneously keeping all their useful actions. You have also created an invention that is uniquely yours – and doesn’t infringe the original patent.

Developing your own patent further

The same processes as described in the preceding section can be used to develop your own patent further, but you’ll probably want to start with more incremental solutions. To generate improvements in your existing patent, look to trim out components far away from your Prime Function. These will generate small solutions that leave your basic system intact but can be added as dependent claims to your patents.

Also follow the steps discussed earlier in this chapter to add in missing functions with new subjects, and then trim them out to generate further developments in your patent. In addition, complete all the steps suggested in the preceding section for getting around someone else’s patent because, in doing so, you’re adopting the mindset of a competitor – but before your competitors have even seen your patent. This allows you to predict many (even better, all!) of the ways in which other people may try to circumvent your patent when it’s published. You can then include these as other claims; even independent claims if the ideas you come up with are radically different to your original system. Trimming allows you to predict how your system will develop in the future; what you choose to do with this information depends on your patent strategy.

If you’re planning to develop your own patent further, consult the Trends described in Chapter 4. Trimming and the Trends are the two most powerful tools for developing and protecting intellectual property.

Redrawing any new system you develop and trying to trim it again is always worthwhile. At the very least, apply the Standard Solutions (which you can read about in Chapter 13) to deal with any new potential problems. You’ll generate a range of solutions that will allow you to plan the future for your system – and its next generation.