Accessibility of the innovative principles to further levels of abstraction in product development

The paper introduces the transformation of the 40 innovative principles of TRIZ into a description with the Contact and Channel Model (C&CM). Reason therefore is the attempt to make the principles better applicable for the generation of new ideas in product development at any stage of the product development process. The paper in a first step introduces the C&CM. The core of the C&CM approach is an orderly assignment of the functions of a product to their shape, which enables designers to break up with rigid, pre-fixating representations of products. C&CM product models by means of Working Surface Pairs (WSP) and Channel and Support Structures (CSS) force users to think about products in a more abstract way. Designing with the C&CM is conducted on a meta level through (i) adding WSP, (ii) removing WSP, (iii) changing the properties of WSP and (iiii) changing the properties of the CSS. The paper reflects the reasons for the transformation of the innovative principles of TRIZ into C&CM before the theoretical approach is explained. The paper closes with a case study where the coupling of the innovative principles to the C&CM meta-rules of designing is applied.