News & Articles

Process improvement is crucial for organizational success. It helps organizations to stay competitive, reduce costs, improve quality and efficiency, become more responsive to changing market conditions, and encourage innovation. There are several process improvement methodologies available, each with its own set of tools and techniques. However, these tools rely heavily on people’s creativity and analytical skills, which can be a trial-and-error process for teams. PRIZ Guru offers analytical and problem-solving tools to assist engineers at any step of the process improvement undertaking, equipping teams to overcome barriers during this initiative. What is process? As usual, we will start with an…

One of the challenges our users face with the Perception Mapping tool is collecting perceptions from other people. Usually, it requires people to be physically present in the same room or on a conference call, and even then, coming up with good perceptions takes a lot of time. Eventually, it wastes the majority of the meeting dedicated to finding the blockers, leading to the need for scheduling another meeting to continue. We have done our homework and concluded that this is a problem worth solving to make time more valuable. With the latest update to Perception Mapping, you can now…

The Perception Mapping tool has long been renowned for its ability to help engineers to find blockers. The process of finding blockers results in a list of perceptions and their blocking ranks. The higher the rank, the more impacting the blocker is. These are the ones that should be resolved first. Without it, you won’t be able to “move a needle”. But, what should we do when we end up with many perceptions with the same blocking rank? Now, by combining Perception Mapping with our popular Round Robin Ranking, you can effortlessly determine which blocker deserves your immediate attention and…

We all know that understanding your customer’s needs is essential for any business to succeed. This is one of the reasons why we built one of our creative thinking tools called Action Preventing Action (APA). However, we felt that the tool alone was not enough, and we wanted to make it better by providing a working companion when you need him. Get ready to be amazed by our latest product update that brings an incredible breakthrough to our APA tool! We’re excited to introduce the power of AI-assisted customer needs analysis right at your fingertips. With this game-changing update, you…

In today’s rapidly changing world, problem-solving and critical thinking skills are becoming more crucial than ever. One specific skill that can help individuals creatively solve problems is engineering thinking. In schools and universities, we teach math, physics, biology, programming, and many other tools. This is great! Knowing tools is extremely important. Unfortunately, despite its high demand, the current education system often neglects this very important skill called Engineering Thinking. The consequences of this neglect are significant. Without engineering thinking, students are not fully equipped to tackle real-world problems they may encounter in their future careers. Many students may find themselves…

This case study explores the usage of Process Functional Modeling (PFM) as a problem-solving tool in microchip manufacturing. PFM is an innovative way of thinking that involves breaking down a process into its components on multiple levels and generating innovative solutions. The tool enables us to move from general to specific, from process to operations, operations to components, and components to functions. In this article, we provide a real-life example of how a team applied PFM to the microchip manufacturing process. We want to demonstrate its effectiveness in creating a model of failure in the context of the whole process….

We have some exciting news to share about one of our most popular tools Round-Robin Ranking (RRR). RRR is a simple and powerful tool that helps us make decisions when we have many options to choose from. However, when there are a huge number of comparisons to make, RRR can take a very long time to complete. To address this issue, we have released a new and improved comparison algorithm called Smart Ranking. It minimizes the number of comparisons required while still producing highly accurate results, similar to those obtained through full ranking. This makes the ranking process more efficient…

As an engineer or innovator, you may often find yourself faced with complex problems that require a solution. In these situations, it can be tempting to rely solely on your own knowledge and experience to find a solution. However, have you ever considered the benefits of using problem-solving tools? Why do we need these tools, and what can we gain from incorporating creative thinking instruments into our problem-solving process? In this article, we’ll explore the importance of problem-solving tools and the advantages they offer for engineers and innovators. Let’s start with a definition, and try to answer what is engineering…

Following one of our previous releases of the Process Functional Modeling (PFM) tool, we have added a summary tab to help innovators to visualize the overall status of the analyzed process. The information provided in the summary tab is mainly built to provide suggestions about where should we focus our attention and what operation we need to invest in. The summary tab presents the following: