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40 Inventive Principles

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The 40 Inventive Principles is a basic TRIZ tool that assists in problem-solving, generating new ideas, and creating innovative solutions. Genrich Altshuller developed the technique’s fundamentals by analyzing, classifying, and systematizing tens of thousands of patents.

What will you get from 40 Inventive Principles?

40 Inventive Principles is a creative thinking tool that helps us to free from psychological inertia and makes us think “out-of-the-box”. 40P redirects the problem-solving process from guessing and intuitive decisions to creative analysis and innovative solutions generation.  Here, we want to summarize how you and your team can benefit from the 40P tool:

  • Stop guessing and start engineering thinking to solve of a problem
  • Avoid trade-off solutions, containment, and temporary “patches”
  • Create novel ideas and innovative solutions to a problem
  • Develop intellectual capability to solve problems

When should you use the 40 Inventive Principles?

The 40 Inventive Principles thinking tool is useful in various cases of parameter improvement. Some highlighted cases include:

  • Unexpected deviations of parameters from the limits (excursions)
  • Chronic issues requiring KPI improvements
  • Development of new processes and products
  • Effective management of continuous innovation process

From here, you can further explore and discover many other situations where the 40P thinking can be useful.

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Showcasing Successful Projects

Microelectronics

Wafer cleaning issues at the wet process

Wet cleaning is widely used in microchip manufacturing. Single wafer equipment is working as follows. A wafer rotates, and chemistry is poured from a movable nozzle. Water rinsing is performed at the end of the process. Loading of a new batch of the chemistry resulted in excursion - a strongly increased amount of defects was observed on the wafer after the processing. The project is dedicated to the failure analysis and creation of innovative solutions.

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Microelectronics

SiO2 thin film creation in Diffusion furnace - Process Functional Modeling

The process is related to microelectronics - microchip manufacturing.The purpose of the process is to create a SiO2 layer on the surface of a Si wafer. Equipment: Vertical furnace to heat the wafers in the Q2 atmosphere and perform oxidation on the wafer surface. Process: The oxidation occurs on the front side and on the back side of the wafer Requirements: Create a SiO2 thin layer with a certain thickness and low sigma - low standard deviation of the thickness between the wafers and within the waferFailure: Wafers from the lower zone have higher thickness and significantly higher within wafer sigma (standard deviation of the thickness within the wafer)

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Prioritization

Urgency - Importance Matrix Example: Prioritize tasks after returning from vacation (at work and at home)

An example of how to make task prioritization with Urgency - Important Matrix (UMI) using the PRIZ Innovation Platform

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Mechanics

Vacuum cleaner problem

The vacuum cleaner problem is an excellent example showing how to manage and resolve excursion - unexpected deviation from normal operation. Read, learn and use the platform for resolving of your excursions.

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Metallurgy

Improve cleaning of vacuum oven

The vacuum furnace is used for sintering parts made of metal powder. To keep the shape of the parts, a binder is used. The main problem is that the vacuum furnace becomes dirty and needs a very long cleaning. Regular washing was not successful. We investigated the process and found that washing should be dedicated to the conversion of the material into a form that results in the formation of gases having low temperature of the condensation

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Chemistry

Chilled water issues

Chilled water is used for production equipment cooling. Suddenly pH of the water started to drop. The aim of the project is to analyze the issue, understand the root cause, and propose solutions to the problem.

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Management

How to prevent engineers' turnover at the plant

To reduce high turnover at the plant the managers propose different ideas, but it does not help. All proposed solutions are good, but there are some of them that are blocking the effectiveness of the rest of the solutions. The purpose of the project is to analyze the proposed solutions (perceptions) and define the blocked. The solutions with high blocking rank should be completed first to ensure the effectiveness of the rest of the ideas. The Perception Mapping (PMap) creative thinking tool was used for the blockers definition.

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky
Microelectronics

Wafer breakage at flash heating

Flash heating of a wafer is widely used in microchip manufacturing. The purpose of the process is to prevent the diffusion of ions and atoms. During the flash process, a wafer breakage occurs. The project's purpose is to learn and understand the mechanism of the wafer breakage and propose the solutions to prevent the wafer breakage

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Dr. Anatoly Agulyansky