инновационный консалтинг и внедрение ТРИЗ в бизнесе

• Повышение доходности логистической компании в сегменте B2B
• Разработка стратегии по сдаче неликвидных площадей в аренду
• Разработка нового цифрового продукта в сегменте С2С
• Формирование конкурентных преимуществ в сегменте В2С
• Повышение спроса на услуги компании в крупных городах по магистральным маршрутам
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• Повышение доходности логистической компании в сегменте B2B
• Разработка стратегии по сдаче неликвидных площадей в аренду
• Разработка нового цифрового продукта в сегменте С2С
• Формирование конкурентных преимуществ в сегменте В2С
• Повышение спроса на услуги компании в крупных городах по магистральным маршрутам
• Переход на солидарное управление взаимоотношениями с клиентами (без агентов)
• Повышение активности агентской сети в регионах
• Повышение точности планирования инвестиционной деятельности филиала
• Поиск путей обеспечения 100%-выполнения инвестиционного плана
• Оптимизация структуры собственного автопарка
• Оптимизация системы управления складскими запасами
• Оптимизация методики анализа и ремонта закладных трубопроводов
• Оптимизация решений по использованию охранной сигнализации подстанций
• Исключение слеживаемости кальцинированной соды в силосе готовой продукции
• Повышение устойчивости подъездных автомобильных дорог в теплый период
• Оптимизация схемы оборотного водоснабжения
• Предотвращение сброса нефтепродуктов в воду
• Предотвращение несанкционированного доступа в сеть
• Разработка способа защиты технического манометра
• Снижение аварийных отключений сети
• Снижение времени разборки ротора при реконструкции гидроагрегата
• Снижение дебиторской задолженности управляющих компаний
• Снижение затрат времени на техническое обслуживание трансформаторных подстанций
• Снижение затрат при проведение ремонта на сетях ХВС
• Снижение количества аварийных сходов с линии самосвалов из-за топливных систем
• Снижение количества брака при ремонте паропровода
• Снижение себестоимости производства за счет обеспечения вертикальности монолитных конструкций
• Снижение случаев повреждений уплотнений затворов холостых водосбросов
• Сокращение времени схождения показаний датчиков уровня в барабане котлоагрегата
• Увеличение времени безотказной работы электроконтактного манометра
• Увеличение время наработки рабочих колес
• Увеличение пропускной способности плужкового сбрасывателя
• Увеличение срока службы основания для разливки жидкого кремния
• Уменьшение брака при производстве вибропрессованной продукции
• Уменьшение затрат времени на ожидание допуска по наряду-допуску в цехе
• Уменьшение продолжительности ремонта тепловой изоляции трубопроводов энергетического котла
• Уменьшение трат на потребление электроэнергии при производстве вибропрессованной продукции
• Устранение вредного механического воздействия пучинистых сил грунта на кабельные лотки
• Устранение примерзания породы в накопительном бункере
• Устранение сбоев в работе системы учета для различного оборудования распределительных сетей
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Good question. I happen to hear it. Meanwhile, the person asking this question often already has some idea of “how to do it right” based on the experience of other companies or experience of applying other methodologies. But, at the same time they amazingly hope for a “magic pill” (if there is some secret that can be found out).

First, I am going to talk about my experience in #TRIZ implementation that I obtained as I was making first steps. And I will finish with conclusions I managed to draw and how these conclusions helped me to develop my own approach.

In 2018 I discovered how the Corporation operates. And there I gained my first experience of introducing TRIZ within the Company (note: after all, working on individual projects in the open market when the scope is very specific and Terms of Reference are available is one thing, and working on changing the mind of a company which can be done not only in the form of the projects is quite different).

The company, a real industry giant, is open to innovations. It has many years' experience in implementation and application of production system #ps #lean, #QMS and QA/QC methodology.

The level of project management maturity in the Company also turned out to be high. The very word “project”, pronounced in vain, generated some cross-functional activity around it. Documentation, software and crowdsourcing infrastructures required for project management were also in place. Regulation on Projects promised a quite specific bonus proportional to the actual economic effect from the implementation of the project solution, etc.

In general, one way or another, constructively or not, either from the moment of the genesis of a brilliant idea or with 1 year lag, the Company employees at various management levels were involved in project activities. Those who ever planned budget will understand the dynamics of transformations (and even regardless of the budget, who wants to be engaged in introduction and implementation of a solution that has not yet been invented?..). However, the transformations proceeded systematically.

The decision was made to implement TRIZ in the company in a similar way. Corporate institutions began to form the lists of go-ahead employees and talent poolees (not always those lists coincided). Those included in the lists were sent to TRIZ training, as to any regular training routinely undergone by employees multiple times.

But then the students were surprised to discover that training was no easy thing. And that word “training” is just a figure of speech. What the Company presented as “TRIZ training” actually meant project work to develop a specific technical solution, in the process of which employees undergoing TRIZ training mastered completely new, and to put it bluntly, not the simplest, abstract #triz thinking tools using their own, raw, real production material.

The students became interested. The instructors prepared a profound and customized problem with a rate of finding solutions at 90% (14–15 out of 16 students in the group completed training and successfully solved the problem). However, the implementation rate was below 15%.

A sophisticated analysis was not required to understand the causes of this phenomenon. Projects and problems important for employees undergoing training were not considered as such by their managers and were not supported in other related business functions. As a result, after completing TRIZ training and finding a solution of a problem which seemed critical and important at the beginning, the employee returned to the workplace (“came down to earth”) and could not (or even did not try to) implement this solution.

One would think, why don't you select and discuss the project targets with the business unit managers in advance? Why don't you assign focus groups and then conduct TRIZ training to find solutions? Of course there were nuances and “buts” in this process, the details of which are beyond the scope of this article.

One way or another, further training was conducted after approval of project targets, and the higher was the level of approval, the higher was the rate of implementation.

Then we realized that approval by the manager is not yet evidence of their motivation to implement the project and introduce the project solution found later. This is just the first step meaning “not hindering” project work. And the idea that a TRIZ project (complex, nonlinear, time-consuming, creative, pushing all those involved from the comfort zone) should have a Customer at the Company's top management level having a “vested interest” in project implementation, seized the minds of corporate TRIZ members.

The conclusions I outlined in several paragraphs were actually made as a result of 2 years work of several dozen people. And at first glance they seem outrageously obvious. But there were mistakes, barriers, reflection, collective denial, individual acceptance, and much more.

After the Corporation, I focused on and am still engaged in innovations in non-production companies that can be rather classified as medium ones (note: although the legislation sets a limit of 2 billion rubles income for medium enterprises, here I mean a broader segment of “middle class” companies in the economic arena, assessed not only by the income and the number of employees).

To develop scenarios of innovative work, I spent several months to:

• Collect information on a dozen companies I planned to cooperate with, including information about their activities, typical problems, experience in project management and implementation of innovations;
• Negotiate with top managers to determine ways of using TRIZ and the most promising areas based on various factors by means of joint elaboration of targets, objectives, and concepts;
• Prepare and approve joint action plans;
• Discuss the evaluation criteria to be used for accepting work;
• Define other organizational nuances.

And since the key task was to motivate the top managers to evolve, the main work had to be done at the first two stages (cl. 1, 2).

Based on a thorough analysis of the publicly available information, I prepared the agenda of the first meeting with the Director General. The meeting was successful, if:

• We agreed to cooperate;
• Access to documentation sufficient to develop a scenario for TRIZ implementation in a specific company was provided;
• I was requested to prepare such a scenario.

My experience of interaction with non-production companies(note: financial, insurance, real estate, HoReCa, advertising, logistics companies) shows that a proper scenario for TRIZ implementation will be developed in a dialogue with Director General only if a number of fundamental and objective factors are taken into account:

1. Maturity of strategic planning:
   • Focus not only on current and medium-term (3–5 years), but also on long-term forecasts in the process of preparing the Strategy;
   • Focus on development forecasts for both the industry (competitors), and the supersystem in a broader sense of the word (consumers, contractors, public authorities, co-owners, etc.);
   • Supplementing the Strategy with alternative scenarios (for example, search for new product application areas, new ways of implementation and provision of competencies, etc.).
2. Maturity of business planning:
   • Achieving a balance between targets aimed at maintaining the current level of indicators, and targets aimed at modification of products and business processes;
   • Transparency of methods for determining key growth factors in the medium term to enable objective and steady increase in business planning indicator values;
   • Transparent reflection and subsequent implementation of the business plan solutions adopted in the Strategy;
   • Transparent cascading of strategic targets to the operating level;
   • Consideration and detailed factor-based forecasting of the risk component.
3. Maturity of project management:
   • Adequate level of individual project management maturity (common terminology is elaborated; processes are reoriented, including in terms of project planning and accounting; general methodology for working with projects is developed, including in terms of performance monitoring and training);
   • Experience in project portfolio management;
   • Project management and operations are interrelated (the project pool is formed also based on development proposals received from the operating level).
4. Personnel workload (more simply daily work schedule shall allow time for development).
5. Experience in management of changes.
6. Priority projects implementation of which is not always economically feasible (there can be image, environmental and other non-financial effect).

In addition to the fundamental factors, there is a large number of subjective ones, that one should understand and be able to work with. These are necessary to properly select TRIZ application area in the company:

7. Company management is open to changes;
8. Company management is open to TRIZ;
9. Company management is satisfied with the Strategy and Business Plan;
10. Ways to achieve annual target indicators are unknown;
11. Top managers are satisfied with the financial status of the company (rates and gross data);
12. Corporate culture, in general, and in terms of introduction of changes, in particular.

This is not a standard checklist, but an integrated experience-based list.

Preliminary assessment of the company per the above criteria (cl. 1–12) allows, at the stage of joint work with Director General, to elaborate a flexible concept of interaction on TRIZ implementation (note: flexibility was not achieved in the Corporation as several concepts of training and project work were predetermined before I was employed).

The simple idea is that targets, innovative tasks, project areas shall be voluntary adopted at the company management level as this will precondition management support in implementation of project solutions in the future.

So that sincere motivation is added to “not hindering”, Director General shall clearly understand:

• Strategic bonuses from the use of TRIZ for finalizing the entire business Strategy (through changing focus, assessing market limits and feasibility of developing solutions, increasing transparency of relationship between physical indicators and factors and financial forecasts);
• Benefit from solving specific problems in subdivisions using TRIZ in a short period of time;
• Ability to manage, and also interrupt the process of finding solutions to change processes and products in the company;
• Opportunity to develop employees' soft skills and provide them with a regular platform for cross-functional interaction to create a synergistic effect in the company (note: TRIZ projects allow #emergence when the properties and capabilities of the entire business are not reduced to the simple sum of competencies of individual employees).

In fact, considering information from the checklist, we are talking about the four values named above obtained from application of TRIZ. This information is sufficient for an adequate and experienced leader to make a decision and introduce innovations in the company.

Currently, I use 3 scenarios of TRIZ implementation in the companies. These imply TRIZ application in:

• Business planning (when finalizing the Strategy, business plan, formulating targets in A3, Orders No. 1);
• Project management (when implementing local projects to achieve certain Key Performance Indicators);
• Operations (regular employees' work).

Each scenario is supplemented and filled with details in cooperation with the top managers of the respective company and then is transferred to the motivated implementation stage. 

In conclusion, I would like to quote one of my colleagues, who said “Communication is key!” answering the question “What is the secret of effective interaction between business units?”.

This advice turned out to be universal and really helps in TRIZ implementation in medium companies with relatively transparent structure of subordination and de facto management. So, now you know what to talk about and what to analyze beforehand so that communication does not go down the drain.