- TRIZ has a concept called ideality, which is the ideal state of a system where all functions are achieved without problems. - The author argues organizations should focus on moving products and processes towards ideality, rather than just addressing gaps with competitors. Nokia failed to do this with smartphones. - To help organizations visualize moving towards ideality, the author created an ideality matrix tool to map out contradictions at different system levels and track progress resolving them through innovation. This case study provides an example of how the ideality matrix was used to improve a material planning process.

1. ASQ www.asq.org Page 1 of 5
Making the Case for Quality
July 2016
by Sunil Kumar V. Kaushik
Ideality: The Pinnacle of
Quality and Competition
One can assume the common reason behind the failure of many big brands to be competition, but
the real reason is often a failure to identify and resolve contradictions in the system. For instance, an
example of this can be found when Nokia was the leader in the cell phone market. The company could
have easily been the inventor of a smartphone, but they failed in (or ignored) addressing some of the
key contradictions, providing an opportunity for the iPhone and Android.
A previous case study written by this author in March 2016 detailed the process of using TRIZ, the theory of
inventive problem solving, to speed up lean and Six Sigma projects. The article focused on a system and sub-
system level, but the author realized there was a rather large opportunity for the business hiding underneath.
The objective was to devise a fool-proof methodology that could help any organization stay ahead of
its competition through innovation. The quality methodology used to make a strategic plan is “hoshin
planning,” and one of its key steps is to develop breakthrough objectives. Many major brands follow it,
but why do many fail and few succeed?
These breakthrough objectives are established purely through tools like Ansoff Matrix (an example
of which is provided in Table 1), which helps to show the gaps in the product or services offered to
the existing consumers and the offerings of the competitors. The entire process of innovation is seen
through a very small lens, and secondly it is seen on the existing product rather than the functionality.
Table 1: Ansoff Matrix
Ansoff Matrix Existing Products New Products
Existing Functionalities Market Penetration Product Development
New Functionalities Market Development Diversification
TRIZ has a very powerful concept called ideality. According to the concept, the ideal state of the sys-
tem is where all of its functions are achieved without causing problems. The system is better, faster,
costs less, commits fewer errors, and requires less maintenance. In other words, an ideal system con-
sists of all positives and no negatives.
This author was convinced the breakthrough objectives during the hoshin planning should not be based
on the gap between the existing business metrics and the competitor benchmark, but rather the gap
between the existing functionalities and the ideal functionalities. Products are the channels through
which the functionality is met, and thus the focus should be on the ideal functionality rather than
• For any given
contradiction, TRIZ has
a solution for improving
the process by making
changes to a process step.
• Within TRIZ lies a concept
called ideality, or the
ideal state of a system
where all functions are
achieved without problem.
• In this case study, the
author explains how
ideality can be achieved
using real-life examples.
At a Glance . . .

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For example, the first row will have all the contradictions of the
ideality. Always start in the first block from the left. As seen in
Image 1, the contradiction of the ideality is 9/26 (9 is the contra-
diction we intend to improve and 26 is the undesired result). In
this case, 9 is speed and 26 (taken from the TRIZ contradiction
table) is the amount of substance. From there we have the next
segments containing the principles of the contradictions written
in a clockwise manner, i.e., 2 (prior action), 7 (periodic action),
14 (pneumatics), and 31 (enriched atmosphere).
compact designs and kept working on the hardware while the
competition moved toward ideality.
Ideality Matrix
Learning from the Nokia example, it was evident that the prob-
lem was the lack of availability of a tool to visualize the ideality
and the contradictions. The author designed an ideality board
containing the ideality matrix that can be pinned to a wall for
the purpose of capturing contradictions at different levels, pav-
ing the way for innovation.
This simple matrix captures contradictions at supersystem to
subsystem levels. Each square or block represents a contra-
diction and is subdivided into eight segments capturing the
principles to be used and the status of resolving the same. The
matrix allows for efficient use of space and to see the flow of
contradictions and the status of the innovations from where the
process/product is as of today and up to the ideality.
Why the matrix is used in this manner is the same as why profes-
sionals create a value stream map (VSM) on a wall rather than
using software: to visualize the contradictions and see how it
flows from system to subsystem. It helps in channelizing the cre-
ativity to resolve one contradiction at a time, and it can also be
used as a dashboard to visualize the status of the contradictions.
existing product functionalities. Eventually, every product will
move toward ideality.
The way to move toward ideality is by resolving contradictions.
The best example is the communication as a function. An ideal
communication device must resolve the contradiction like zero
noise, zero delay, easy maintenance, etc. One-by-one the con-
tradictions were resolved from the time of smoke signals and
drums, to the age of smartphones.
The Nokia Story
As we already have existing products and processes, today we
take a bottom-up approach by identifying gaps and slowly mov-
ing toward ideality. What if we took the top-down approach
where the ideal state is known, and then devise activities/tasks
required to move toward ideality? From there, we identify gaps
and resolve contradictions.
This author examined the case study of an original cellular
phone device innovator, Nokia. The company failed to see the
ideality and resolve the contradictions. One of the crucial factors
of adding value to the customer toward ideality were the number
of applications in the phone. The contradiction facing the com-
pany was that more applications meant more engineers to create
the applications, and thus the device becomes more complex in
adapting to versatile applications. This might look a bit complex,
but the TRIZ contradiction table has ready-to-use principles:
• Segmentation – Separate the hardware and the software
(Android or iOS).
• Pneumatics and hydraulics – Change solid applications to
customized, user-preferred applications.
• Other way around – Instead of building the applications,
let the customer build their own apps.
• Local quality – Modify the product to meet the environment
(access to the internet was becoming cheaper).
• Cheap disposable object – Customer-built applications
available online for free/lesser cost (Google or iOS store).
• Dynamicity – The customer can choose the apps per his or
her preference.
• Prior action – Make the users aware of the functionalities
via marketing.
This author argues that, even if Nokia was unable to resolve
these contradictions due to unavailable technology in the late
1990s, it could have put them in the watch list to monitor the
market for looming technologies, like the Android, that could
help them resolve the contradictions so they could exploit the
opportunity at the right time.
Apple and Android engineered the solutions that resolved the
contradictions and suddenly it was too late for Nokia to make its
mark. Nokia failed by releasing newer model cell phones with
Image 1: Ideality Matrix

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a. Order the materials via purchase
order in advance/place blanket
purchase orders to speed up the
schedule, but the undesired result
is constant change in the plan
(unreliable plan). The principles
to resolve this conflict are:
i. Cushion in advance – Add
buffer (safety lead time) to
the dates/quantities based on
the risk.
ii. Change property – Keep
the plan flexible until the
required date is not less than
the actual lead time.
iii. Use cheap disposable objects
– Hold the inventory (safety
stock) rather than multiple
reschedules for low-cost/
low-impact materials. Pay
the penalty of rescheduling
if cheaper.
iv. Replace mechanical system
with fields – Automate the
process of communicating the
changes to the suppliers.
2. Periodic Action
a. Periodically reschedule the
orders based on the demand,
and the undesired result will be
supplier dissatisfaction (harmful
effect created by the plan). The
principles to resolve this are:
1. Prior Action – Perform, before it
is needed, the required change of
an object:
In the figure, principles 14 and 31 have
been underlined, meaning a solution has
been identified or invented based on
those principles. However, 2 and 7 have
given rise to another set of contradictions
as seen in the second row. For example,
the principle 2 (prior action) in the first
row has given rise to a new contradic-
tion 9/27, and then the corresponding
principles 29, 1, 13, and 4 are written
accordingly. Similarly, principle 7 in the
first row has given rise to a new contra-
diction 26/31 represented in the second
row, second block, with principles 12, 1,
17, and 23. If the function has obtained
the ideality, then all of the principles
should be underlined, which also means
there is no further improvement required
or attainable.
The Material Planning Case Study
Upon reading a previously published
case study on asq.org, a senior executive
of a material planning service organiza-
tion contacted this author seeking to
conduct a virtual workshop that would
train employees how to use TRIZ to
solve problems faster.
The executive shared that a client of his
company had outsourced its entire pro-
cess for managing inventory and service
levels through material availability to
a company in Manila, Philippines. The
sole reason for outsourcing the process
was to reduce the cost of manpower like
many other organizations were doing.
The service organization intended to
offer material planning to its other clients
and sought to be best-in-class for com-
petitive purposes.
This author proposed an alternative
workshop, where instead of training
the resources to make improvements at
the process level, why not innovate by
involving the senior executives at prod-
uct level?
The virtual workshop had 12 partici-
pants ranging from senior executives
to subject matter experts. This author
first understood the function of material
planning and defined the ideal system.
An ideal material planning system
will hold zero inventory and meet the
demand 100 percent of the time with-
out spending on the maintenance of the
function in itself.
The next step was to draw the Level 1
customer, output, process, input, and
supplier (COPIS) because material flow
begins from the supplier, and thinking
starts from the customer:
• Customer – Manufacturing or
assembly line receiving the material.
• Output – Material delivered on time
with zero inventory.
• Process – Creating, executing,
and rescheduling the plan to have
the materials delivered to the
shop floor on time by holding
minimum inventory.
• Input – Actual demand, forecasting,
capacity, lead time, etc.
• Supplier – Buyer, forecasting, ERP
systems, and master schedulers.
Then the first contradiction from the goal
was defined, (i.e., if demand must be
met every time, then inventory must be
increased, which is an undesired result).
In TRIZ terminology, the contradictions
are between speed (meeting the demand
as soon as possible), and quantity of
substance (inventory). The principles to
resolve them are:
Image 2: Ideality at Level One
Image 3: Level 2 Contradictions

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i. Local quality – Reschedule orders based on more
than just need date, including lead time, impact of
delay, and cost.
ii. Change property – Change the order quantities and
need date.
iii. Composite materials – Have multiple suppliers
with different types of contract terms and provide
flexibility to manage orders.
iv. Inert environment – Have a freeze zone where
changes are not acceptable.
3. Pneumatics or Hydraulics
a. Keep the order dates and quantities flexible and the
solutions are already identified in local quality and
change property.
b. Work with supplier contracts that have clauses to
reschedule the orders.
4. Enriched Atmosphere
a. Forecasting the requirement will reduce inventory but
will lead to additional cost.
b. Have a strong communication process across the chain.
This will help suppliers react to the change quickly, but
will lead to increased cost of productivity.
i. Harm to benefit – Having an additional resource
(expeditor) to communicate the changes will help in
building stakeholder relationships and smooth the
flow of information and material.
ii. Change property – Use standard communication
templates.
iii. Other way around – Move from push communication
to a pull communication method (i.e., rather than
sending emails and reports to the suppliers, a
common document is shared on the server, which is
updated both by the supplier and the customer).
iv. Intermediary – Rather than communicating all of the
changes in the plan, communicate based on the end
impact and need.
Now we have resolved one of the main contradictions. Though
the system is very agile and versatile to demand changes, it has
become rather complex. Hence, the new contradiction is adapt-
ability vs. device complexity.
1. Dynamicity or optimization – Complete a VSM workshop
to remove wastes, create flow, and optimize the process.
2. Pneumatics or hydraulics – Convert all paper and image
information into a digitized format to enable automation.
3. Thermal expansion – Use resources/systems/teams that
can handle multiple needs rather than one team handling a
particular need.
4. Replace a mechanical system with fields – Embrace
Microsoft Excel macros and process automation software.
The Innovations
Table 2 highlights some of the innovations resulting from
the workshop:
Table 2: Innovations and Impacts
Innovation Impact
Excel-based tool that performs
Monte Carlo analysis
Helps to decide on the order quantity
and date based on lead time
Excel-based communication tool
with standard templates
Sends scenario-based bulk emails
Supplier tool Predicts the number of suppliers,
best ordering quantity, clauses to
be included to minimize the risk
Excel simulator Creates a plan based on the demand
Work flow on the communication plan Defines who should be told what
and when, and what should be
push communication and what
should be pull communication
Stakeholder distribution lists Ready-to-use stakeholder register
to manage communication
Process automation software for desktop
automation for enterprise resource
planning software Oracle r12
Ready-to-use code that removes
90 percent of manual data entry on
the Oracle r12 planning package
This organization has a large advantage over its competition.
While competitors talk about cheap labor, this organization
demonstrates the innovation and explains how it can take the
process to ideality with minimum workforce.
These innovations will take the process toward ideality rather
than having the process in a status quo to save money. Even the
organization’s business model changed following the workout
from pure revenue based on head count as they began providing
additional services on consulting, selling innovations, and more.
For the first time, this small company was shortlisted as a
potential vendor for a big retail client to offer material planning
services purely through innovation.
American International School in Vietnam
While visiting Hanoi, Vietnam, as part of an around-the-world
cycling trip, this author was hosted by a European teacher who
worked for a local school. At the time, the school was organiz-
ing an interschool art exhibition for kids aged 10 to 15. The
author expressed interest in conducting a TRIZ workshop to
help the kids. Given permission by the school principal, he was
provided a one-hour daily slot for a week to work with staff,
who would in turn teach the students. Here are two examples of
the 19 innovations that came out of the training.
An 11-year-old Korean boy wanted to write a cookbook for the
exhibition. The ideality, with respect to the teacher/school, was
that it should be the best cookbook written by an 11-year-old

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(manufacturability) while being very practical and useful (con-
venience of use). The principles the boy had to use were:
1. Other way around – Instead of an 11-year-old writing a
book that could be used by adults, write a book like an adult
that can be used by kids.
2. Separation or extraction – Use recipes that do not require
fire for safety reasons as the targeted audience are kids.
3. Merging or combining – Instead of creating purely
Korean recipes, make it a fusion cookbook so that it has
global reach.
4. Partial or excessive action – Keep researching, merging,
and adding recipes.
The student created a book with 20 recipes, including desserts,
featuring a fusion of Korean and other cultural recipes. The
book can be used by children of at least eight years of age, and
the parents intend to publish the book. This is innovation.
The other project was of a 14-year-old girl who wanted to artisti-
cally explain the mood of the poem, “The Woman in the Mirror.”
The contradictions were that she wanted to express the mood
visually (shape of the object) for the poem, but how to do it (ease
of manufacturing) was the problem. The principles used were:
1. Segmentation – Break the poem into parts.
2. Optical changes – Create the emotion of the poem by
changing the color and angles in space.
3. Moving to another dimension – Use photograph as a
medium (she could have chosen painting, illustration, etc.).
4. Replace a mechanical system – The mechanical systems
involved in explaining a poem could be a pen if written,
voice if to be explained, or a camera if it is a photograph.
She chose camera.
The girl photographed herself in a bathtub changing her hair-
style, during which she added an array of colors and objects to
the frame in the background. This explained the mood of the
poem, which was displayed in the exhibition.
These innovations were born in a span of few hours, with many
possessing potential for a patent. It is surprising to the author
why organizations do not include TRIZ as part of their DNA,
while innovation seemingly so often takes a back seat. He
assumes there could be only two reasons: Either the organiza-
tions are unaware of the potential—which even the author was
unaware of a year ago—or they use it keep this fact confidential
due to its high impact and competitive advantage.
Process dashboards have all of the quality metrics on the pro-
duction floor. Similarly, there should be a TRIZ board right
from the CEO’s cabin to the production floor so everyone is
aware of the contradictions that exist—not just within the orga-
nization, but in the market.
For example, the CEO should have a well-defined ideality and
contradictions at the product level. These contradictions must
be broken down to the product’s functionality level and owned
by middle management to resolve. The levels below the func-
tionality (component or subsystem level) must be owned by the
employees reporting to middle management. This helps organi-
zations keep a watch on the technology and techniques that can
help them stay ahead of the competition through innovation.
More than the rest, the biggest motivating factor is these meth-
ods help employees to innovate, which helps increase job
satisfaction. Innovation is one of the biggest assets to any orga-
nization. It does not need an expensive, complex skill, rather
several days of simple training that can lead to a huge return
on investment.
For More Information
• To contact the author of this case study, email Sunil Kaushik
at sunilkaushik15@gmail.com.
• To view this and other case studies, visit the ASQ
Knowledge Center at asq.org/knowledge-center/case-studies.
About the Author
Sunil Kaushik, PMP, SPSM, CPSCM, ASQ Certified Six
Sigma Black Belt, is a freelance Six Sigma trainer and con-
sultant. An ASQ Influential Voices author, Kaushik blogs at
www.trainntrot.com. He is completing an around-the-world
bicycle tour to promote sustainable quality and is willing to con-
duct a free virtual workshop for your organization or university.