Engineering work is built on three essential pillars: process improvement, cost reduction, and root cause analysis. Engineers should dedicate their thinking to a specific and measurable target, use thinking tools and resources, and recognize and value engineering thinking. The PRIZ Innovation Platform offers tools for engineering thinking, including Process Functional Modeling, 40 Inventive Principles, and Effective Brainstorming. Engineers should focus on improving only those operations that increase the value of the product, remove all operations that do not increase the value of the product, and understand the origin of defects and eliminate them. What does an engineer do? What does…

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…

Root cause analysis is one of the most popular tools in the problem solving process. And, the majority of people, honestly believe that once the root cause is found, the problem is solved. That is an incorrect statement. In this article, we want to explain why. What is the root cause? First, we should understand what the root cause actually is. In our vision, the root cause is not necessarily the fundamental reason for the problem. We like to split the definition into two reasons: Root cause analysis in PRIZ Innovation Platform PRIZ Innovation Platform offers two instruments for root…

It is about problem solving tools. “You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job.” – this is from “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome, chapter “Uncle Podger hangs a picture”. You can enjoy reading the famous book again and again, but this particular chapter exactly corresponds to our topic, creative thinking tools.  What is most important to our topic is that Uncle Podger used tools: “Now you go and get me my hammer, Will,” he would shout; “and you bring…

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a practical problem-solving tool. Once a root cause found we can concentrate on the solution that is related to the found root cause. A definition of a Root Cause is extremely important for the problem-solving process. We should clearly define and understand what a Root Cause is. Otherwise, RCA becomes completely useless, besides a problem will not be solved. What is Root Cause? Everyone remembers a traditional definition:  ROOT CAUSE IS A FUNDAMENTAL REASON FOR THE OCCURRENCE OF THE PROBLEM. This definition is very popular and clear, but we have to take into account the…