Commentary by Ellen Domb

Report from Zacatecas Day 2

Saturday dawned (well, 8:30) with more than 100 people attending the workshops on innovation, lean, six sigma, collaboration, and international business. The informal theme of the Friday session was emphasized by several of the presenters: let’s stop talking about “it” (innovation, or quality, or whatever!) and start doing “it.”

Jeannine Siviy, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute kicked off the plenary session by addressing “Innovation in Engineering Process: Multimodel Harmonization.” She explained the problem of multiple model environments, in which a variety of models for corporate management and improvement are deployed at different hierarchical levels, across functions, using a variety of methodologies. For example, one company might have improvement initiatives using six sigma, ISO certification, improving enterprise governance, changing configuration management, and using CMMI (software methodology improvement.) This creates competition for resources, contradictory metrics, and duplication of work without any increase in benefits. The harmonization research is creating a unifying structure based on a philosophical orientation: go for performance first, the compliance will come, rather than an elaborate checklist approach. The case study of the approach used by Lockheed Martin was very helpful, and was also an illustration of the “positive deviant” method explained by Roberto Saco on Day 1.

Darrell Mann traveled to Zacatecas by way of Australia and the US (next stop Austria!) Darrell needs no introduction to the TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation readers. The Forum audience was very receptive to his presentation “Breakthrough Software Design and the Need for Breaking Rules.” He used Infosys specifically and India more generally as benchmarks for development of IT in all areas. (89,000 employees. 8000 new last year, one million applicants for the new jobs.) He compared the well-known software design patterns to the TRIZ principles for innovative problem solving, and reported on research that expands the patterns by a factor of 500. Darrell reported that the research shows that there are millions of systems, but only hundreds of problems and tens of successful solutions (no surprise to our TRIZ readers.) He presented a new acronym that was helpful to the people hearing about TRIZ for the first time:

PERFECT –IFR. Get rid of trade-offs

ESCAPE –from the box. Disrupt your patterns of thinking.

RESOURCES –use all resources to solve the problem, and don’t forget that the knowledge of the situation is a resource.

FUNCTIONS—understand the job the customer is trying to do.

EMERGENCE-patterns of evolution. The audience was very impressed by the universality of the patterns

CONTRADICTIONS – Eliminate them! Software uses the same 40 principles, but re-interpreted for the nature of software

TURTLES—Systems are fractal (the turtles are part of a long joke.)

Readers who want more of Darrell’s great examples are invited to go to the free downloads section of www.systematic-innovation.com

The after lunch speakers shared success stories from businesses in Mexico, and some of the resources that are available for businesses that need help starting innovation or quality initiatives, or both.

Jorge Perez-Rubio from the AMA training and consulting organization challenged the participants with “Leading Innovation: a unique opportunity for Mexico,” emphasizing the unique resources of people, education, location, and natural resources that Mexican companies can access.

Victor Hugo Arellano Lopez, Director of Operations for Texas Instruments de Mexico, reminded the audience of TI’s long and distinguished innovation history (revolutionized the exploration for oil, invented the integrated circuit, developed infrared cameras, created new industries with the DSP and DLP—even won the Emmy for how technology changed entertainment!) He showed how TI de M’s employees are the foundation of its continuous innovation and quality improvement efforts, and gave examples of the reward and recognition system that is a fundamental part of TI’s process.

David Rios Jara explained “Regional Innovation Systems” which had been benchmarked for products, services and management models. Experience in Europe for small and medium-sized enterprises was considered particularly relevant to Mexico. They found that regional systems are better than trying to build big national or mult-region systems— they are more in touch with the technology and resources of the region.

Fernando Avila, Quality Assurance Manager of the Tequila Sauza Company gave the concluding address, “Foundations of Value: Statistics, Quality and Competitiveness.” The audience appreciated his strong focus on quality defined as satisfying the customers’ needs, and his entertaining stories about the tequila business. His conclusion that quality alone is not sufficient for competiveness was well-received.

Temo and the entire staff of CIMAT got a very well-deserved round of applause from the audience for an excellent program.

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