Innovative Design in Quality Engineering

Industry is currently evaluating hundreds of applications to innovate their products. The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TIPS) can help industry achieve this goal. It provides principles of standard thinking called inventive standards that are based on a limited number of physics phenomena and mathematics theories. Applying these principles of thinking would avoid generating undesirable solutions and approach desirable ones. The theory is very powerful and almost unlimited. The basic concept of TIPS is understanding the process of describing a product that would then leads to its development. It is best applied when there are strong conflicts that the designer has to resolve. For example, to design a tailor needle, we have to solve the eye conflict. The needle’s eye should be small enough to secure comfortable sewing and big enough to put the thread through. The objective of this paper is to discuss TIPS, describe its five levels of inventive tasks and develops a systematic procedure for its application. A case study is described that details the application from the conceptual design stage to the final inventive design stage.