Research on application of process model for product concept creative design based on TRIZ and TOC

Conceptual design is the key phase which confirms the principle solution that contains a great deal of innovative ideas. Theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and theory of constraints (TOC) are two techniques for systematic innovation that can help designers and companies achieve innovative product solutions. TOC is used to discover contradictions and TRIZ is used to solve the conflicts in the process of product conceptual design, so we describe a process model to realize the theoretical interaction based on TRIZ and TOC. Beginning with the interaction between users and product to be designed, this paper makes a survey of user demand, summarizes in which stage of product development is and analyzes the directions of product technology evolution by selecting evolution routes of technical system. After design conflicts in product system are determined, the designer achieve the solutions of each sub-function of product according to their experience and heuristic association by using TRIZ tools. Designers let the users select the sub-function solutions from the morphological matrix and combine into a few suitable programs. Finally, the designer conduct program evaluation to obtain the optimal product solution by analytic hierarchy process (AHP). As a case study, an innovative design of the UV lampblack purification machine has been achieved with application of the process model.