Methodology for the Evaluation of the Innovation Level of Products and Processes

TRIZ Features

March, 2009
Dr. Noel Leon Rovira

The TECNOS Award was established in the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico more than 10 years ago, as a way to stimulate people, enterprises, and institutions that contribute to the competitiveness and to the technical and economical development of the region through highly creative and innovative products and processes.

To select the winners, expert criteria had been used up to now, which in many cases was strongly influenced by subjectivity.

This paper describes the methodology developed by request of the TECNOS award steering committee, looking for more consistent, sustainable and repeatable methods. The methodology is based on concepts of TRIZ, Value Engineering and the Kano Model. Particularly the concepts of levels of customer satisfaction, invention level, ideality, and patterns of evolution are applied and combined with metrics sustained on value engineering. Radar diagrams for the pattern of evolution are combined with the levels of inventiveness and paired comparison, on the basis of a 1000 points scale. The methodology is assisted by a VBA program in Excel that facilitates the evaluation process.

This paper relates case studies performed before the methodology will be applied for selecting the winners, identifying repeatability and consistency. The main aspects and questions occurred during the training of the evaluation committees’ members and the testing of the methodology are commented.