Why do "Research Scholars" need TRIZ & TAGUCHI Method?
 
 

Research scholars in IIT/IISc/University departments have the unenviable task of achieving the following goals during their Research/Development/Ph.D. work, (Italics show scope/difficulties)
 
 

    (1)  Search/Find a "Research Problem"
          (After a decent literature survey)

    (2) Visualize/Design/Construct an apparatus/measurement system
          (In congested lab space, under paucity of funds)

    (3) Do a lot of experiments to Setup/Calibrate/Standardize/Commission the equipment
          (In the presence of all kinds of variations/Noisy conditions)

    (4) Get repeatable/reliable results
          (After making the equipment "robust" against noise)

    (5) Publish results in reputed journals
          (Have to be one-up on recently published literature)

    (6) Write Documents/Reports/Thesis
         (While referring all the time to published literature/motivation/scope/results etc)

Work related to items (1) to (4) must be done in a short time of 2 years (after 1 year for course work). Item (5), the first paper, may take up to a year to get published. One more year will be needed for 2 more papers to get published. Finally, item (6), the thesis, ought to be finished before the stipend gets stopped after the 5-year deadline!

So far, nothing is said about the quality of Ph.D.! What use is a Ph.D. if it has not addressed a 'difficult problem' nor offered 'new/novel' results to the same? All the future depends on the thesis being 'very good' (which is really an illusive adjective).

I have put together a tandem of techniques called "TRIZ-Inventive Problem Solving" and "Taguchi Method" to improve the chances of getting "novel results to difficult problems". These 2 techniques are,
 

(1) TRIZ : to find/define the "difficult problem" and propose several "inventive solution concepts".  (After a decent "patent" literature survey)

(2) TAGUCHI Method: to experimentally optimize one of the solution concepts, by working on the "existing" experimental setup/measurement system to get the "best" results. Taguchi's 9 or 18 experiments are the minimal orthogonal set of experiments to get results within matter of weeks (which would otherwise take months!). Detailed experiments can then be done using these 'best' settings.
 

What does the course offer?

This course introduces all the main TRIZ tools so that you can first identify the inventive problem and then find several innovative/inventive solutions for the same. One of the inventive solution concepts is chosen for implementation.

The course also teaches "Taguchi method", which is aimed at optimizing a process through experimentation over a range of process control parameter settings. It determines the 'best' settings of parameters that will make the process 'robust' in spite of unavoidable variations in control parameters and noise.
 

go back to Apte's Web-page   http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~apte

go to Taguchi Page   http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~apte/CV_PRA_TAGUCHI.htm

go to TRIZ page   http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~apte/CV_PRA_TRIZ.htm

go to Why-Triz-Tag Abstract   http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~apte/WhyTrizTag-Abs.htm