News & Articles

A fresh look at variation vs change—and how PRIZ Guru’s Change Flow Thinking (CFT) turns uncertain tweaks into confident system transformation. Change Is Everywhere—But Who’s Really in Control? In today’s high-pressure world of manufacturing, engineering, and business, change isn’t optional—it’s survival. Processes must evolve, technologies must advance, and whole systems must transform to stay competitive. Yet most teams still ask the wrong question: “How can we tweak the system to shave costs?” instead of “How can we change the system to unlock new value?” Those “tweaks” rarely deliver innovation. They’re variations, not change. Variation vs Change: Who’s Managing Whom? At…

Change is inevitable; Change Flow Thinking (CFT) makes it manageable. CFT is our new visual framework that unites change management and built-in risk management so every tweak, upgrade, or corrective action moves forward with clarity, speed, and confidence. Why Change Flow Thinking Transforms Change Management In fast-moving manufacturing, engineering, and R&D settings, a “minor” change can snowball into costly downtime, quality escapes, or compliance headaches. Classic change-control systems often flag issues too late, after plans, parts, or paperwork are locked in. Change Flow Thinking fixes that gap by: With CFT, your team can spot dependency clashes, quantify risks early, and…

In manufacturing, especially in high-stakes industries such as semiconductors, even minor process variations can rapidly escalate into costly yield excursions, significantly impacting margins and production schedules. These excursions occur when a seemingly small issue, such as subtle equipment drift or minor material inconsistencies, triggers extensive scrap losses, delays, and unanticipated costs. Preventing yield excursions before they escalate requires rigorous risk management and proactive response planning. One method increasingly favored by manufacturing leaders is Change Flow Thinking (CFT), a structured, visual approach that allows teams to anticipate and mitigate risks early. Understanding Yield Excursions Yield excursions start innocently, often with minor…

How Change Flow Thinking (CFT) helps QA leaders embed quality at step zero and keeps surprise costs off the CFO’s desk. Why post-change fixes drain quality budgets Manufacturers that still rely on inspect-and-fix discover defects only after the schedule and spend are fully committed. Every late finding triggers re-work, premium freight, or engineering change orders. With Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) often running 15–20 % of annual sales, the root problem is clear: risk management was never built into the original change. Step-zero risk management through Quality by Design Quality by Design (QbD) reverses the old sequence: instead of chasing…

Understanding customer needs is not just about improving products—it’s the foundation for innovation, strategic growth, and long-term profitability. Most organizations fail to grasp what their customers truly need because they ask the wrong questions. The key is not asking “What do you want?” but rather understanding “What keeps you busy?” PRIZ Guru’s Action Preventing Action (APA) tool offers a revolutionary way to decode real customer needs, drive new product development, and ensure your company stays ahead of the curve. This article explores why identifying customer needs is the main vector of technology development and how APA turns this understanding into…

TL;DR – 90-Second SummaryHidden process drifts often stay invisible until final inspection—or worse, a customer complaint—triggering frantic line stoppages, re-work, and premium freight. Predictive QA surfaces those drifts hours or days sooner and guides teams—via PRIZ Guru’s structured tools—straight to preventative action. The result: double-digit Cost-of-Poor-Quality (COPQ) savings and far fewer 2 a.m. firefights. 1 | The Fire-Drill Epidemic — Why QA Lives in Crisis Mode For most Quality Assurance teams, defects are discovered after they are baked into the product. Scrap, premium freight, and warranty claims routinely consume 15–20 % of annual sales—a range the American Society for Quality cites as…

The High-Cost Panic of Missing Batch Records Thursday’s FDA inspection looms, yet your document room looks like a paper tornado. Three versions of the same SOP conflict: a sterility reading can’t be traced to its calibration file; an unresolved CAPA hides in someone’s inbox. Production stops while QA hunts for proof. A single unverified entry in the batch records can invite a Form 483—or a full-blown shutdown. The real bill arrives in idle lines, frozen work-in-progress, and sleepless teams who know their regulatory compliance story has holes. Why CAPA Gaps Derail Regulatory Compliance Everyday QA headache Plant-floor ripple Leadership anxiety…

The 3 a.m. Yield-Excursion Alarm That Threatens Production Yield It starts at 02:57 with a single red wafer map in the SPC inbox, then a second lot with the same scratch-like pattern.By the time the on-call QA engineer reaches the fab, four upstream steps have already processed dozens of wafers. First-pass production yield nosedives 25 %, and material worth ≈ US $17 k per 5 nm wafer is on the line—about US $0.5 million per 25-wafer lot. That nightmare is a runaway yield excursion—and it keeps winning because the evidence is scattered across isolated dashboards. Why Yield Excursions Escape QA…

A defect that went global — and why it never should have When a micro-crack appeared in the aluminum housing of an industrial pump at Plant A in Brazil, the local QA team ran a textbook 8D, traced the root cause to machining pressure, and updated their work instructions.Six weeks later, the same crack surfaced at Plant B in Germany. Nobody there had seen the Brazil report, so engineers repeated the investigation, losing five shifts and € 320,000 in scrap. By the time Plant C in Malaysia caught wind of the pattern, defective units had already reached a customer. The…