Application of TRIZ in Inventive Product Design: A Case Study on Baking Tray Rack

Abstract

Innovation is an important weapon for enterprises to achieve sustainable development in the market. In the large number of product markets featuring dramatic changes today, the products that attract consumers and win their heart must be manufactured to create business opportunities. Therefore, it is more vital to create opportunities of product innovation than to determine consumer needs. Taking the baking tray racks produced by an enterprise for an example, this study innovated the product with the skills and knowledge of TRIZ, a systematic innovation tool, according to consumer needs. In this study, function analysis was adopted to analyze the components and interaction of baking tray racks, and create a function model graph. The causal contradiction chain was analyzed to explore diverse consumer needs for baking tray racks, all the problems were analyzed one by one, and then, interlinked to determine the roots of the problems and identify contradictions. After analysis, 39 engineering parameters were introduced regarding all factors, and the engineering contradiction matrix was employed to seek the invention principles for innovative ideas. Moreover, the design of the baking tray racks was simplified according to the concept of simplistic design. Eventually, the assumed improved baking tray rack was endowed with three innovative functions: (1) it could be stored away ; (2) baking trays of various sizes could be placed on it at the same time; (3) it enabled enterprises to meet consumer needs and be innovative .