Using a TRIZ framework for systems engineering trade studies

Identifying and appropriately resolving system tradeoffs or effectively evaluating alternatives is a key deliverable of systems engineering. Without proper resolution, system performance is hindered, or suboptimal technologies are chosen. TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, offers tools and methods to identify and resolve tradeoffs (which it terms contradictions or conflicts). TRIZ recognizes that fundamental performance limits arise when one or more unresolved tradeoffs exist in a system. According to TRIZ, eliminating or reducing the effects of the conflicts is necessary to move to improved system performance. This paper presents a TRIZ Trade Study framework that is useful to identify system conflicts, both across alternatives and within a technology, and at various levels of requirements decomposition, to compare options and optimize how the system performs. The framework was developed to perform a trade study between alternative pharmaceutical production systems, and merges traditional trade study methodologies with classical TRIZ. Specifically, traditional pharmaceutical manufacturing development and manufacturing were traded against an emerging and proposed approach, QbD (Quality by Design). Given TRIZ is scalable and useful to a variety of systems, the application of the TRIZ Trade Study Framework is also broadly applicable across system scale and domains. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng